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Comments on Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious?

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Ending a line of dialogue with "?!": Allowed or obnoxious?

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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.

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General comments (1 comment)
General comments
Mark Baker‭ wrote over 4 years ago

Both allowed and obnoxious. Allowed because it is sufficiently supported by convention and usage. Obnoxious because it should be unnecessary in well written prose. Lots of things are both allowed and obnoxious.