What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed?

A beast, no more.

Jeez, Hamlet. Relax. It’s just a Big Mac and fries.

This week’s tasty morsels of fiction are nothing to feel guilty about, we promise.

Munch. Burp. Aah.

Beasts, O Prince of Denmark? You bet, and with curves. — Robert Paul Moreira

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Huh?

Recently we discussed question marks with our pal Doug Hagley over at Boulevard. Doug is the senior consulting editor at Boulevard and prior to that he was the senior editor of Witness for 20 years.

The true focus of the discussion was the use of question marks in dialogue. We were arguing that question marks in dialogue are redundant. Doug was listening.  Here’s the nut of our argument.

Say, for instance, you had this bit of dialogue:

“What are you doing,” he asked.

Why would there need to be a question mark anywhere in there?

1. You have a sentence that starts with the word why, which, in 99% of all cases, will result in a question.

2. There is the tag: asked.

Using a question mark here, at least in our opinion, would be overkill. How many different ways do you need to inform the reader that the sentence is an interrogative one?

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