Can you end an article with a question? Certainly, but you must give the reader enough evidence pro or con, yes or no in the article for the reader to be able to answer the question. Asking a question at the end of a feature requires that the reader continue to consider the article.

In his article “A Tragedy Too Easy to Ignore,” Detroit Free Press writer Mitch Albom chronicled the Damon Bailes story. Bailes, a Detroit native, was shot in the back of the head during a pick-up basketball game, apparently because an opposing player thought Bailes wanted his red basketball shorts.

The bullet, Albom wrote: had hit the lobe that controls vision and left Bailes with only partial sight, paralyzed on the right side. In the months that followed, he would regain a slurred speech, partial vision and some feeling in his otherwise dead right leg and arm. The vision bothered him most. He would cry for hours over his near-blindness.

Albom’s end: What are we supposed to do? The future of our city is being taken down, gangland style, one ambulance after another. We have to do something. Tonight is Christmas Eve, they are talking flurries, and that should make our suburbs pretty and white.

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But try to remember, while you open your presents, that somewhere, not far away, Damon Bailes is struggling to see the drawings on the wall, the ones teaching him how to walk again. For what, you keep asking yourself?

If you ask a rhetorical question, as Albom does, the ending also carries an implication of the editorial ending.

Car and Driver tested the new Dodge Neon and reported the test in the April 1994 issue, in an article under a headline and subhead:

Writer Patrick Bedard’s ending was: Can we live with$11,552 Neon? Yes, very well, thank you. The lesson of the Neon is that common sense makes a real nifty car. This is bad news for Saturn and other small cars that have relied on low prices. They simply can’t measure up for roominess and performance.

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Would we prefer a plusher version? Well, yes, and we’ll have a test of such a Neon within a few months.