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Do we put an interrogation mark inside a quote? I've heard you shouldn't put a dot, but I feel like you should put an interrogation mark inside a quote, because otherwise you wouldn't know if it's a question or not. What do you think?

For example:

He asked him "Are you deaf?" in Justin Timberlake's voice.

He told him "You're cool" in Justin Timberlake's voice.

As you see the second doesn't look odd, but if you remove the interrogation mark it looks odd.

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There must be a question mark inside the quotation marks.

If question marks apply to the quoted material, they go within the quotation marks. If they apply to the whole sentence, they go outside it.

In this case a question mark is expected inside the quote, but as it doesn't end the framing sentence, the word "in" isn't capitalised.

It should probably be

He asked him "...?" instead of "told".

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  • What about commas?
    – blackbird
    Jun 23 '19 at 12:46
  • In the US, these go inside the quotes. In the UK these normally go outside (unless the comma is part of the quotation.) A comma is mandatory in the pattern ' "...", said Jon'.
    – James K
    Jun 23 '19 at 14:25

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