erm...is that a question..... or is your ego not getting enough attention, eh?

One thing (admittedly of many) that gets on my nerves - people who seem to think that the time reserved for questions at the end of a seminar is, in fact, an opportunity for them to give a speech. Seriously, if you have a question, then for crying out loud ask it already, we really don't need to be given an abridged autobiography or a list of your objections against humanity. The worst ones are the ones who begin with:

"Well, in my experience as a medical doctor.....",

as if, somehow, a *medical* experience were worth ten merely human ones. And then they tend to go on like this,

"... and when I was in Bangladesh last year blah, blah, blah.....",

and finish thus,

"... and quite frankly, I think that's appalling."

Please note: a series of statements is not a question. Even if the statements are all about yourself, they're still not a question. You can repeat these statements as many times as you want, but it's not going to change this basic grammatical fact. A question ends in one of these, "?", and, in most languages, involves a natural upward inflexion of tone. In some cultures, it's even common to add ", eh?" at the end of a question, in order to make it even more obvious. Although sometimes, people add "eh?" at the end of a sentence, even though it's not a question, which is very strange. But kind of endearing....