Loaded Question – a question that carries an assumption, and is worded in such a way so that the respondent who answers the question directly admits to accepting that assumption.
 

A loaded question is really two questions phrased as one. The loaded question assumes that the first answer must be true; otherwise, why would someone phrase it that way?
 

EXAMPLE 1

An attorney asks: “Have you stopped beating your wife?”

The two questions in this example really are, “Have you ever beat your wife?” and “If so, have you stopped?”  Loaded questions usually demand a “yes” or “no” response.  Yet, no matter how this man answers, he gets himself in trouble: “yes” implies that he used to beat her but have recently stopped; “no” implies that he has not stopped beating her, as usual.  Trial lawyers can be quite good at phrasing loaded questions, causing the other side to object to the slanted diction and inherent implications.

 
EXAMPLE 2

A friend without tact asks: “I notice that you surf the Net a lot.  Do you enjoy all the pornography you find there?”

This question implies that this person’s main interest is downloading pornography when using the Internet.  Again, if the question is being asked of someone who has been caught doing this red-handed, then the question is fair.  Asking this question to a complete stranger presumes past behavior that we cannot validate.  We are wiser people when we avoid writing insipid statements such as these.