Question marks and colons

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

RockyRoad - 30 Jan 2004 08:55 GMT

When you are writing a phrase that would usually end in a colon, but is
also a question, which symbol is best to use? For example:

Which of these items is the one you want?:

A. Red
B. Blue
C. Green

Also when a sentance is a question but ends with material in
parenthesis, I sometimes feel that putting the question mark after the
brackets weakens the thrust of the question, is there a better way to do
it?

Signature

Rocky Road - in Oz

Reply to this Message

Jerry Friedman - 30 Jan 2004 16:43 GMT

> When you are writing a phrase that would usually end in a colon, but is
> also a question, which symbol is best to use? For example:
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> B. Blue
> C. Green

Just the question mark, in my opinon.

> Also when a sentance is a question but ends with material in
> parenthesis, I sometimes feel that putting the question mark after the
> brackets weakens the thrust of the question, is there a better way to do
> it?

Sometimes people don't tell you that when a sentence ends with a
parenthesis that in itself is a complete sentence, you can--maybe
should--put the parenthesis after the end of the first sentence.

"Am I making this clear? (It's the best example I could come up
with.)"

When you can't do that, your best choice may be to rewrite the
sentence.

Signature

Jerry Friedman

Reply to this Message

RockyRoad - 30 Jan 2004 23:19 GMT

> > When you are writing a phrase that would usually end in a colon, but is
> > also a question, which symbol is best to use? For example:
[quoted text clipped - 21 lines]
> When you can't do that, your best choice may be to rewrite the
> sentence.

Thanks.

Signature

Rocky Road - in Oz

Reply to this Message

Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2004

Question marks and colons