Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Question marks in quotations

This is topic Question marks in quotations in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by Netstorm2k (Member # 2279) on :

Alright, here's a poll:
Which is correct?

"Where do you live?" he asked.

or

"Why do you want to know," she asked in answer.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

The former.

Posted by HuntGod (Member # 2259) on :

Punctuation ALWAYS goes inside the quotation. Though it does sometimes look funny.

This is where the grammar nazi's come in and correct me :-(

"He said he looked all over," Bill stated clearly and then continued, "though he obviously didn't!"

Posted by Netstorm2k (Member # 2279) on :

?

Posted by GZ (Member # 1374) on :

"Where do you live?" he asked.
is the correct version.

The punctuation goes inside the quotes (In American English anyway -- other folk do it differently I believe).

Posted by Netstorm2k (Member # 2279) on :

I know the punctuation goes inside the quotes.
I was checking on how many did the proper grammatical thing, and let the word 'asked' stand for the question mark- inside the quotation marks. Its actually supposed to, according to two different grammar texts.
I think it's foolish, though.
-"Why not?" she asked.- looks better, even if it is redundant. Most people read the dialogue, and skip the after part, the tags. At least, I know I do, especially in a good story. That's why so many people get away with just using the dialogue alone, without the tags, which is also grammatically incorrect.

[This message has been edited by Netstorm2k (edited January 09, 2005).]

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

First, you must always include that question mark in the direct quotation. The only exception is periods, as you know, which are replaced by a comma.

Second, if you have a question mark in the dialogue, why do you need to then BE redundant by adding the unnecessary dialogue tag of 'she asked' ? Oh, and Netstorm, why is it grammatically incorrect to NOT use dialogue tags? The sole purpose of those tags is to provide absolute clarity of who is speaking, and SOMETIMES to add to the clarity of how the words are being spoken. If these two things are already quite clear (of the former this is, of course, only possible if there are only two people present) there is no need for a dialogue tag, so why use one?

Anyway, to avoid the redundancy it would be best to try to do away with the tag altogether. Try, I say. Because for clarity of who exactly is speaking that is not always possible. For your consideration:

"So," he said, leaning over her desk and flashing a grin too white to be real. "Where do you live?"

She rolled her eyes and stuck her pencil behind her ear to avoid the temptation to jam it into his eyesocket. "Why do you want to know?"

[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited January 09, 2005).]

Posted by Netstorm2k (Member # 2279) on :

Oh, I agree with everything you said, djv. I'm just going by these old grammar texts I saw at a garage sale. Made me laugh when I saw them.
Just goes to show how the rules tend to change.

Posted by Lord Darkstorm (Member # 1610) on :

There is an exception. Punctuation goes inside the quotation marks as long as it is dialog. If you were using a quotation:

How can that be "official"?

Ok, not the greatest example, and I'm sure this doesn't come up in fiction writing that much. Anything that is a quote that is not specificly dialog would not contain the punctiation.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

If you're quoting a question in dialogue, then you're quoting the inflection that indicates that it is a question, just as you would quote the "嗎" in "你好嗎". Ommitting the question mark from the quote would specifically indicate that the speaker did not inflect the words as a question, and that would make it inappropriate to use the dialogue tag "asked".

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

For those of you who don't speak Chinese, that transliterates as "Nǐ hǎo ma" which means "How are you?" (Literally it's "You good?")
"Ma" is the question indicator. The only problem with this example is that it is perfectly acceptable to just say "Nǐ hǎo" without the question indicator. Although, I think Survivor's point might be that leaving out that "ma" changes the formality of the speaker's words. I only took six weeks of Mandarin so he'll probably come back and correct me fairly quickly.

Posted by goatboy (Member # 2062) on :

Wow! Survivor said all that? All I can see is 4 little square boxes in quotes. Must be missing the appropriate software

Posted by MaryRobinette (Member # 1680) on :

Oh, you must have the Mondrian rather than the Mandarin software installed.

Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :

Well, this is a bit out-of-date now, since other people have addressed it. But I wrote a response to this last night and then my internet connection died before I could post it. So I'm posting it tonight:

Netstorm--I know this wasn't your original question, but since so many other people brought it up, I have to comment.

Punctuation does NOT always go inside quotation marks. The punctuation associated with the quotation does, and periods and commas that logically should go outside still go inside (As in: The three most important words in the English Language are "the," "English," and "language.")

However, other punctuation that logically should go outside actually does go outside. For example: Did Ethel say,"I'll be five tomorrow"? Ethel didn't ask the question; the speaker (or writer) of the entire sentence did. The position of the question mark reflects that.

But now I've got a question. In the example above, if Ethel had asked a question ("Will I be five tomorrow?") instead of making a statement, would there be two question marks, one for Ethel and one for the containing sentence? Or does the outside one get dropped? I'm pretty sure it's the latter, but I'm not at all positive.

[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited January 10, 2005).]

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

LOL, Mary. I'd almost forgotten all about Mondrian! It's been a long time since Art school.

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

Netstorm, I suppose it could be still true that dialogue tags are correct.

But, like fragments, we writers get to do what we like--to a reasonable extent.

I just looked back to some old stories to see what was done in the 19th century about dialogue tags. Found Hawthorn. Dialogue tags out the earlobes. Not a single line of dialogue without one. And, here's the funny part just to show you how times and styles have changed, I came to imagine that that Hawthorne kept a list of possible dialogue tags with him as he wrote and just rotated through them as he went along. ...she cried. ...he exclaimed. ...he replied. ...she observed. ...he answered. ...she shouted. ...he added. ...he cried. ...she exclaimed. .......

Wow! We'd totally harrangue someone for doing that these days! And I won't even make MENTION of the adverbs!

Posted by Netstorm2k (Member # 2279) on :

Now I'm wishing I had bought that book at the garage sale, so I could quote it. I know it's wrong, I just thought it was funny.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Actually, I will go ahead and correct Mary. "你好" is more akin to "wassah!" (being a corrupted form of "what's up?"), and thus is no longer a question, but a form of greeting based on an interrogative greeting. Just as you would not use either the question mark or the dialogue tag "asked" for a character saying "wassah!", you wouldn't say that a character simply saying "你好" was asking it.

Note, you can also indicate that a person saying "what's up?" isn't actually asking a question, since this is often the case, and the same applies to "你好嗎", just because the person intoned or phrased something as a question doesn't mean it is actually being asked.

Also note that using dialogue tags like "she cried. ...he exclaimed. ...he replied. ...she observed. ...he answered. ...she shouted. ...he added. ...he cried. ...she exclaimed" isn't wrong, as long as you restrict their uses to points where it actually is saying something meaningful about the dialogue. Use "she cried" to indicate that the words were spoken in a loud or emotionally charged voice. Use "he exclaimed" to indicate that the quoted phrase was an exclamation, particularly where that is not immediately evident from the text itself.

Phrases like "he replied," "she observed," and "he added" are interesting because they are quite subtle in effect. In any case, it is certainly important that you not overuse such tags, but it is no more sensible to avoid them completely than it is to give up on ever using "asked" or even "said" itself. The point of using "said" most of the time is to reserve the others so that they actually mean something when you do use them. If you're never going to use them, then there is no point in the rule of restricted use.

Posted by ArCHeR (Member # 2067) on :

The most simple way to put it: all punctuation goes inside the quote. BUT when it's a period, and there is still more in the sentence after the quote, the period changes to a comma. That's about it.

The problem comes in when you're using quote marks but you're not quoting. IE:

He's really not so much a "geek" as he is a "dweeb."

To me it always seemed kinda weird to have the period inside the quotes, but according to at least one of my English teachers, you're supposed to.

Posted by HuntGod (Member # 2259) on :

That drives me crazy too.

Posted by Pyre Dynasty (Member # 1947) on :

At least one of my english teachers says I should be locked in the trunk of a car.

I don't care if they burn me at the steak, (Hmmm steak aghhhh) I will never do a sentence like "Nerds" and "Geeks." Because in this case the """ is used more like a "(" so a sentence would be incorrect if it wrote: I like (Nerds and Geeks.)

On the original question I like "Where do you live?" he asked. The other hurts my brain on how "Why do you ask," could be a statement. (although I know it's not but it looks like it.
I say find a Manual of style (or write one) that you like and stick with it. If someone calls you on something you can say "See it's right here in the book." And then when they come in close you can shut their nose in the book.

Posted by ArCHeR (Member # 2067) on :

actually, they aren't being used as (. They are being used as ". The fact is just that you're not quoting anyone in particular. You're quoting the people who use the term in that way. It merely implies in my example that you're not meaning:

He's not so much a carnival performer whose show consists of bizarre acts, such as biting the head off a live chicken as he is a person regarded as socially inept or foolish, often on account of being overly studious.