Sunday, April 26, 2015

punctuation - How to punctuate a quoted question within a question?



How would I punctuate the bold portion?





"Who are you?" she asked.



"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me Who are you?"




I would use the following:




"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me, 'Who are you'?"






  • Comma before the quote


  • Quoted with single quotation marks (instead of italics, which I'd consider another option)


  • Closing quotation mark before the question mark


  • Only one question mark (for my question, not the quoted one)




Is this correct?


Answer




Here's the correct version:



"Wait," I replied, "did you just ask me, 'Who are you?' "



Some things to notice:
1. The statement being quoted is a question, so you need the question mark in the embedded quotation marks. You don't need a second question mark. A sentence can have only one end punctuation mark.
2. The comma before the embedded quotation, which follows standard format for introducing a quotation.
3. The space between the single and double quotation marks at the end.



If I were to revise this, I would write this:
"Wait," I said. "Did you just ask me who I am?"


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