Is a question mark necessary at the end of a compound sentence?

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Is the following grammatically correct? or is a question mark required at the end?

For what is the highest aspiration of any human being, but to make the world a better place—and we know that this is a possible feat because it has become a better place, through the decades, through the centuries.

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[+3] - engineer - 12/28/2014IMO, this should be two sentences. For what is the highest aspiration of any human being, but to make the world a better place? We know that this is a possible feat because it has become a...

@palad1n,

IMO, this should be two sentences.

For what is the highest aspiration of any human being, but to make the world a better place? We know that this is a possible feat because it has become a better place, through the decades, through the centuries.

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@engineer,

I agree. I don't see any reason to force an interrogative and a declarative into a single sentence. It doesn't work rhetorically and only serves to annoy the reader.

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@palad1n,

Pal, that's a good q, and the trend is away from the q mark

However there's a third approach that for some reason is strenuously avoided by many if not most; that is, using it somewhat like a comma

I wondered, where's my coffee? though everyone else knows exactly where I left it

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@FBM,

Yeah, annoy. Simple is better.

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

I wondered, where's my coffee? though everyone else knows exactly where I left it

That breaks several rules, not least the one that says a period, exclamation or question mark ends a sentence. Also you are using "wondered" as if it was identical with "asked myself" which it isn't. I suppose you could rewrite it thus:

I wondered where my coffee was, though everyone else knows (knew?) exactly where I (had?) left it.

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@contrex,

Quote:

That breaks several rules

Yes Con, I realized it might provoke such reaction, and I wish I had the patience to Google it thoroughly. But in my youth I distinctly remember reading somewhere that the q mark could be used like that, where we might otherwise put a comma

Help somebody

Edited to remark that I was able to find a few marginal examples, like

Quote:

Was she really doing the best she could? was the question

Edfited again with

Quote:

Update: Here's a quote from Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol": "What right have you to be dismal? what reason have you to be merry?"

Maybe the rules change change wunchnawile. Or maybe, since after all nothing is entirely anything and everything is partly something else, there's simply no such exactitude, no such thing as absolutely right nor wrong

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

Was she really doing the best she could? was the question

I would alter that to

"Was she really doing the best she could?" was the question.

Quote:

Here's a quote from Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol": "What right have you to be dismal? what reason have you to be merry?"

The correct quote is "What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?". Note the capital W starting the second "What".

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@contrex,

Well Con like I said, life just isn't long enough for exhaustive Googlings but another quickie reveals it both ways/ You might be right of course, maybe Dickens did capitalize, but many quoting him seem to think not

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=punctuation+Dickens+%22to+be+merry%3F+what+reason%3F%22

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@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

Well Con like I said, life just isn't long enough for exhaustive Googlings but another quickie reveals it both ways/ You might be right of course, maybe Dickens did capitalize, but many quoting him seem to think not

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=punctuation+Dickens+%22to+be+merry%3F+what+reason%3F%22

OK. Let me try to explain.

1. If you are writing stuff on paper with a pen or pencil (a novel, a love letter, a shopping list, whatever), you can write what you like. If you write "Why are we here? why is the sky blue?", the Style Fairy is not going to come down and strike out the lower case w that starts the second sentence. If, however, you submit your handwritten pages to a publisher and they accept it, it will go through a process called "editing". At this stage, an alert editor would notice the error and correct it. In the old days there was a guy called a "typesetter" who was the last line of defence and he would pick up errors the editors had missed.

2. When doing a Google search you should beware because an error in one place can be copied and quickly multiply because people who put stuff on the web are often lazy and/or in a hurry. If possible, the original text in a scanned version is helpful, complete with a bunch of capital Ws, as here:

Title page:

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/Scrooge2_zps890267e9.jpg

Bottom of page 4:

http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p29/badoit/Scrooge1_zps7a151416.jpg

Link to scanned version of 1858 edition:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f8ANAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

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@contrex,

Quote:

I would alter that to

"Was she really doing the best she could?" was the question.

According to the reference text below, inverted commas are used in direct speech, not reported speech.

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/punctuation-in-direct-speech

"What", say you?

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In American usage, quotation marks are used for reported speech. No one owns the English language, and there are about 300 million native speakers of English in North America.

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@contrex,

contrex wrote:

In the old days there was a guy called a "typesetter" who was the last line of defence and he would pick up errors the editors had missed.

Of course there is a further step after typesetting; I forgot about proofreaders.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

In American usage, quotation marks are used for reported speech. No one owns the English language, and there are about 300 million native speakers of English in North America.

Not sure what you are saying here, Set. In British English, for sure, we have

Direct speech

The words spoken are reproduced verbatim, with quote marks to separate them from the surrounding matter like this:

I started singing to Mary. She said: “Be quiet. The baby’s sleeping.”

Reported speech (sometimes called "indirect speech")

The words spoken are summarized. No quote marks are used or needed. I started singing to Mary. She told me to be quiet because the baby was sleeping.

As far as I am aware, this is true in all forms of English.

"Learn American English Online" appears to agree:

Direct speech: "This meat smells bad," said Tom.

Indirect Speech: Tom said that the meat smelled bad.

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@contrex,

Tom said: "Mary told me that she had heard Bob say: 'That can't be right, i was there, i know.' Are you saying he was wrong?"

EDIT: For direct speech, we us double quotation marks. For reported speech we use single quotation marks. (Not even the terminology is standard--some Americans say quotation marks, others say quote marks.)

1 Reply

@Setanta,

What Mary heard Bob say is rendered as direct speech in your example. To be reported speech it would be something like this:

Tom said that Mary told him that she had heard Bob say that it couldn't be right, he was there, he knew.

I agree that is clumsy.

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In that case, i had a different concept of reported speech. Although i had a double major in English and History, i took English for the literature component, not to become a grammatical "expert," and in any event, that was more than 40 years ago. I certainly would not want to upset Knaivete, our occasionally appearing, resident language quibbler.

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@contrex,

Quote:

2. When doing a Google search you should beware because an error in one place can be copied and quickly multiply

Thanks Con for that title page but after all I did concede that I might be wrong. Nonetheless however, my point being that many seem to consider the lower case okay

Slightly OT but to be technically correct shouldn't some of his periods be commas

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@contrex,

Quote:

Not sure what you are saying here, Set

Careful there Con, you might have entrenched a ferocious lifelong enemy

Forgive me S., couldn't resist

1 Reply

@dalehileman,

dalehileman wrote:

Slightly OT but to be technically correct shouldn't some of his periods be commas

Which ones?

1 Reply

Is a question mark necessary at the end of a compound sentence?

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