‘Guess’ - imperative or interrogative?

[WeddingDressThrowaway]

1. I’m using an old name as I’m going to report the results of this thread.
2. I’m trying to lever an AIBU into my post, when clearly I’m taking advantage of traffic...

AIBU to argue that ‘Guess what/who/etc’ is not a question, rather a command, and therefore does not have a question mark following it?

Yes, it's not a question.

Am I missing something? That doesn't seem controversial.

I mean that you don't need to argue it, it's just correct.

It is a lighthearted debate among friends.

Pengggwn
Well, that’s another win for this thread. I have discovered that I don’t always disagree with you

It's an imperative, but it can function as an interrogative

Maybe it depends on whether there's a pause afterwards to listen for a reply?

Surely it depends on context and/or tone?

I think it can easily be either.

The particular phrase under examination is ‘Guess what, ’

And it is being written (think along the lines of a personalised book title).

Imperative.

Substitute (imperative) "to guess" with another verb such as "to leave" or "to run" and you will see that "leave!" or "run!" are exhortations or orders to do something.

The problem with English is that verbs don't change their form much so it's difficult to know without context whether the subject and / or objects are male or female , one or many.

So when you when you order "guess" or "leave" or "run away" it doesn't matter if it's

a man saying this to several men
a woman saying this to one man
one child to another child
a group of people saying "leave" to another group of people

Similarly it is acceptable to say "if I was you" so the "was" seems like it's in the past tense in the indicative mode when in reality it is in the conditional mode so it should be "if I were you".

But if someone said "if they were you..."

"were" could be intended in the indicative present plural or conditional thus making it impossible to know whether the speaker made a mistake or not.

On the positive side many more spelling or grammatical mistakes are not present in English because verbs don't change form; they never accord with gender and rarely with number (he did/ they did).

YABU to not have posted this in pedants' corner.

It is an imperative. The pronoun “you” is understood.

Actually I would probably put a question mark but not really sure why! I'll have to think about it.

Guess is a verb in the example given.

I think it depends on whether you consider a truncated question [Can you] guess....? or a true imperative. CUP have it as an imperative in this game:
whatcoulditbe.cambridge.org/#/