Comments on Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious?
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Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious?
A dialogue of mine contains the following sentence:
"You fired all three of them?!"
Trouble is, I'm not sure I've ever seen a novel that used a question mark and an exclamation point together - it's something I normally see in comic strips and the like. Is using the two punctuation marks together only acceptable in certain forms of writing, or is it safe to use it in a novel without it appearing childish and/or obnoxious?
Using just the question mark doesn't really create the effect I'm aiming for.
It's acceptable, but should be reserved for rare occasions where it's absolutely necessary to keep the flow of the scene …
5y ago
The combination "?!" has been in common usage enough that the interrobang (‽) was suggested as a punctuation mark to rep …
5y ago
Of course it's allowed, but only if you punctuate it correctly! The mark you want to use is known as an interrobang. …
5y ago
I just ran a search on all of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files for the '?!' mark. Why this series in particular? 1. It's mod …
5y ago
I don't have a problem with '?!', I think people understand it, so it is fair game. I would have a problem with the i …
5y ago
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I don't have a problem with '?!', I think people understand it, so it is fair game.
I would have a problem with the interrobang ('‽'). If I ran across that in a book it would drop me out of my reading reverie just as much as reading 'hxywsxv', in other words I wouldn't have any clue what it meant, without close analysis to realize Oh, it's a question mark with an exclamation point. That's a dumb move.
I feel the same about technical grammar vs 'spoken grammar', I'd rather write sentences the way the majority of readers speak. "What for?" instead of "To what end?". Although proper grammar might be a characteristic of a character that takes refuge in their academia.
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