Comments on: Using the Question Mark

By: Leisureguy

Leisureguy — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 21:02:26 +0000

@rm: No, the question mark in your example goes outside the quotation marks: the question is not the quoted matter, but the statement around it.

@novvie: Your statement, save for a typo (“asked” should be “ask”) looks correct to me: there’s a question mark for the quoted matter, another for the overall sentence. This seems to be in all essential respects the same as:

He asked me, “What is it?”.

By: rm

rm — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 18:43:35 +0000

Can we use question mark in sentences like- ” Describe the lesson in your own words?”

By: novvie

novvie — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 03:56:18 +0000

I think the use is not so complicated, but I REALLY NEED to know if this sentence is correct or not : Did he asked me “What is it?”?

Please HELP!!!

By: Bethany

Bethany — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:04:37 +0000

I would agree with Jeff’s comment. The same thought made me click through my reader to see what others had said. The inverted construction of the subject and verb is an obvious mark of a question. If you changed the pronoun (will he reply?), it’s a question. I’d caution the guide of an upward lilt because of the phenomenon of up-speak first seen in “valley girls” and now popular in various settings. You know what I mean? (Though that’s I guess is technically a colloquial statement that has dropped of the “Do” and then it’s a standard question construction again.)

By: Leisureguy

Leisureguy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:02:54 +0000

My understanding is that both the question mark and the exclamation mark denote tone of voice and thus do not necessary end the sentence—i.e., it can be perfectly correct for the word following either of these to be uncapitalized and part of the same sentence. Examples taken from The Reader Over Your Shoulder, by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge:

‘And then, horror! in marched Mrs. Blackstone with the little corpse held out accusingly between the pincers of the kitchen fire-tongs!’

‘That she had asked herself, was he really there? or was she imagining things? now troubled her conscience.’