indirect-question

Do two clauses have to be separated by a comma in a question?

by

Here is an example: He wondered who stole his television and why a calling card was left behind. Do I need to separate the two clauses (e.g. with a comma between ‘television‘ and ‘and‘)? Any advice is welcome. Answer From most of the examples in this link, keeping or omitting a comma would suffice. ludwig … Read more

Using punctuation within a question to create a pause

by

Is it possible to create a long pause (confusion) in the following question. ‘You’re maybe wondering how could that be. That she is considering running away?’ Between ‘be and that‘, I was considering using an em-dash to create a prolonged pause, if possible. fyi, I believe that the first clause requires a period (indirect question). … Read more

Question mark after “I don’t know what you want from me.”?

by

I’m getting mixed messages on which of the following punctuations is correct: I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t know what you want from me? It seems to be both an indirect question, rhetorical and even a halfway actual question. Is there a generally preferred way to punctuate such a sentence? The … Read more

Inversion/non-inversion in wh-questions with long phrases after the wh-words

by

Can a sentence like this: “I don’t know who the first man that made such and such thing in such and such place was,” be grammatically correct if we don’t put “was” at the end of the long phrase, that is, if we write: “I don’t know who was the first man that made such … Read more

To answer indirect question starting with “Whether” using “Yes” or “No”

by

I have a technical document with the following table: (A comparison table of the functions that are used to search for and replace strings.) | Whether the search is case-sensitive —————————————————— RegExReplace() | It depends on the i) option. StringReplace() | It depends on the third argument of a function call. SubStr() | No. Trim() … Read more

Should an embedded question be set in quotation marks?

by

For example, given the following sentence, is it proper to set the enclosed question in quotation marks? The first question to ask is, “should quotation marks be used?” Any additional comments about the structure of the example sentence above would be appreciated. Answer It isn’t needed in this case. Quotation marks are used when you’re … Read more