Consider the following
What are you laughing at, my silly hat?
and
What are you laughing at? My silly hat?
Which of these is correctly punctuated, and if the first example is correct, what is the name of the grammatical structure? Would the noun phrase after the comma be considered a parenthetical phrase? Is it an example of apposition?
Answer
The second example is correct: the first is ambiguous. It seems as though the speaker is asking his or her hat what it’s laughing at. The two elements before and after the comma in the first example are self-contained questions (despite the second question being dependent on the first), and therefore should be split apart as in the second example.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : xelaroup , Answer Author : Graph Theory
