{"id":2008,"date":"2016-10-04T18:02:46","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T00:02:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/?p=2008"},"modified":"2016-10-04T18:11:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T00:11:47","slug":"easy-as-punctuation-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/easy-as-punctuation-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"Easy as punctuation pie! (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Haley Schabes<\/p>\n<p><b>Part I: The forgotten rules of question marks<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do you truly know how to use the question mark? You may be surprised! Question marks can be surprisingly tricky. Check out these forgotten rules about using question marks (and exclamation points) in your papers:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Question marks are placed after direct questions, but <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">not indirect ones<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: Will you go with me? <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorrect<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">: I&#8217;m asking if you will go with me?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use question marks if half of the sentence ends on a question statement.<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: You don\u2019t care, do you?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: You aren\u2019t going to leave, right?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This one is tricky: Don\u2019t use question marks for rhetorical questions. Rhetorical questions frequently denote sarcasm and are not asking for an answer in response; therefore they are not direct questions. (Find out more <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/punctuation\/qMarks.asp\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">here<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.)<\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: Why don\u2019t you take a break.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: How should I know.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: Could I possibly love you more.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When a question is being asked in dialogue and is followed by attribution to a speaker, make sure the question mark replaces the usual comma. <\/span>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: \u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d she asked.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorrect:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cWhat\u2019s your name,\u201d she asked.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorrect:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cWhat\u2019s your name,\u201d she asked?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><b>This is also true for exclamation points.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: \u201cLook out!\u201d she yelled.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorrect:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cLook out,\u201d she yelled.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Incorrect:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> \u201cLook out,\u201d she yelled!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In quotes, if the whole sentence is a question, then the question mark is placed on the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">outside<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of the quotation marks. If the quote is the question, then it is placed on the <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">inside<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><b>This is the same for exclamation points.<\/b>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: What do you think Steve Jobs meant when he said that \u201cinnovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower\u201d?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Correct: My favorite part of the movie <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A Few Good Men<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is when Jack Nicholson exclaims, \u201cYou can\u2019t handle the truth!\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For more on quote integration, check out <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/?p=1983\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">this <\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">blog post.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Final Tips:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do not overuse question marks. Asking too many questions in a formal paper is unnecessary and detracts from the point of the paper.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Remember that using exclamation points is viewed as unprofessional and colloquial; refrain from using them in formal papers.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Do not overuse the exclamation point. It characterizes undeveloped and untrained writing.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Write on!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Haley Schabes is a senior majoring in business administration and minoring in education, economics, and Asian studies. Her current aspiration is to teach English abroad after college.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Haley Schabes Part I: The forgotten rules of question marks Do you truly know how to use the question mark? You [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,109],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punctuation","category-writeherewritenowwriteon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-wo","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2008"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2014,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2008\/revisions\/2014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}