What/What?

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?

We believe (at least me: Brian Allen Carr) that question marks should only be used in dialogue if the question is not accompanied by a tag. That is to say if the written dialogue appears as such:

“What are you doing?”

Though, even then, does the reader really need a question mark to understand that “What are you doing” is a question?

In our opinion the question mark is only slightly superior to its ostracized cousin the exclamation mark.

Wow!

Why?

What’s the difference?

Most people would argue that if you have to use an exclamation mark, or if you feel compelled to use an exclamation mark, then all you are exclaiming is that you’ve done a poor job of creating an illusion of surprise in your sentence construction. There may be a kindred argument associated with question marks.

Let’s say for instance that you have a really long question:

“What are you going to do if the building catches on fire, and the ceiling falls down on your head and ignites your hair, and you can’t find any water to put out your skull, and, so, all your hair burns off tonight, and you have that modeling gig tomorrow, and you’ll look ridiculous, because you don’t even own a wig?”

The reader is not tipped off to the fact that this is a question by the question mark that falls at the end of the sentence (and we realize it’s an obnoxious sentence), far away from the initial query that launched the line of dialogue. So, why use a question mark at all?

The only time it seems a question mark is truly necessary is when the English language is improperly used. Questions like:

“Need a drink?”

“Anything else?”

“Feeling lucky?”

In those situations the question marks actually aid the reader. The question mark alters the way the final word is read.

Watch:

“Need a drink.”

“Anything else.”

“Feeling lucky.”

In neither case are you reading true sentences. In the interrogative offerings above, there is an implied ‘you,’ and in conversational English we often omit the subject when asking questions (this is much more commonplace in other languages such as Spanish wherein verb conjugation eliminates the need for a subject). But the question marks in these cases are key in English, because they help guide the inflection.

Correctly phrased questions — those that start with what, where, when, how, if, do, per chance, please, etc. — are questions from the get go. The trajectory of their inflection, the way the words leave the tongue or ramble across the mind, leaves readers little doubt as to what the intent of the dialogue could possibly be.

Hagley drew a page-design analogy to parallel our arguments. In design, according to Hagley (and we’re paraphrasing here), it is not necessary to put a headline in bold, italics, larger sized font, and a different font in order to show that it is a headline. If you do the one thing: make it bold, or make it larger, or put it into italics, or use a different font, the reading audience will understand that there’s something different going on with the words. That somehow the set of words — be they a sentence, a phrase, or a single word — has something different going on.

In fact you could stretch this analogy to reincorporate dialogue entirely.

James Joyce did dialogue like this:

Hello I’m James Joyce

Ernest Hemingway did dialogue like this:

“I’m sad. I’m going to kill myself.”

Some people do dialogue like this:

I’m using italics to show you I’m talking.

Cormac McCarthy does dialogue like this:

Hey.

But no one would ever do dialogue like this:

“This here is dialogue.”

And if they do they should be eye gouged.

Perhaps our argument against excessive question marks in dialogue is similar to Cormac McCarthy’s aversion to apostrophes. He doesn’t really use them. Except with certain words: It’s, won’t, we’re, they’re, that’s, he’d.

Omitting the apostrophes with those words might cause problems. But with words such as: cant and dont, he assumes the reader will understand the contraction without the grammatical assistance.

We’re not necessarily leading a charge to dismiss the question mark entirely. But it is kind of fun to ask, “What’s the fucking the point of this?”

– Brian Allen Carr

Song: Elliott Smith “A Question Mark”