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Transcript

00:04

Question marks, a la Shmoop. We all know what simple, direct questions

00:08

look like:

00:09

What's two plus two?

00:11

Is this bread gluten-free?

00:13

What's the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

00:17

Because these are direct questions, they require question marks.

00:21

There are other scenarios, however, where you may be unsure about whether or not a question

00:25

mark is needed.

00:27

For example, take the simple declarative sentence, “Jim has two coconuts and he's banging them

00:32

together.”

00:33

What if you were surprised to see Jim with those coconuts, though? How would you express

00:37

that surprise?

00:39

You would add a question mark to the end of the sentence to get, “Jim has two coconuts

00:43

and he's banging them together?” Then, there's the question flurry. This isn't

00:48

a winter weather condition you encounter in the Midwest...

00:51

...but rather a string of add-on questions tacked on to an initial direct question.

00:58

For example, if you were desperate to stay out for as long as possible on Saturday night,

01:02

you might ask your mom, “Can I stay out until 11:00? 11:05? 11:15? 11:30?”

01:08

Or, if you needed more time to finish your algebra exam, you might ask your teacher,

01:12

“May I have ten more minutes? fifteen minutes? thirty minutes? the rest of the day?”

01:17

Each add-on question gets its own question mark.

01:20

Also, don't capitalize the first letter of an add-on question unless the question could

01:25

stand on its own as a sentence. Let's move on to tag questions. Say you have

01:30

the statement, “That's the Holy Hand Grenade.”

01:33

Tack a tag question on to that sentence...

01:34

...so that you end up with, “That's the Holy Hand Grenade, isn't it?”...

01:38

...and suddenly your statement requires a question mark.

01:42

Next come indirect questions. Examples of indirect questions include, “I wonder why

01:47

the Black Knight is so delusional”...

01:49

...and, “I wonder why the French use farm animals as weaponry.”

01:53

Because statements where you wonder about things are indirect, rather than direct, questions...

01:58

...they do not end with question marks. But what happens when you mix direct questions

02:03

with indirect questions? Do rivers run backward? Does the world explode?

02:07

Well, no. You would write out a direct-indirect question to read, “The question is, who

02:13

were the Knights who say “Ni! <<knee>> ”?”...

02:17

...where you place a comma after the first clause and a question mark after the direct

02:22

question.

02:23

You could also avoid the direct-indirect question nonsense altogether by writing, “Everyone

02:28

wondered who the Knights who say “Ni!” were.”

02:31

The grammar rules for question marks might… raise a few questions…

02:35

…but as long as you practice what you've learned, you should be able to triumph over

02:38

this particular grammar conundrum...

02:39

...just like the Black Knight. Oh, wait...

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