How do I punctuate a question that quotes an exclamation?

[joy_of_cooking]

How do I punctuate this sentence?

What do you do when your two-year old starts chanting, loudly enough for the entire playground to hear, "I wanna fuck! I wanna fuck! I wanna <em>fuuuuuck!</em>"?

(She means fork.)

 

[VerbalAbuse]

What do you do when your two-year old starts chanting, loudly enough for the entire playground to hear, "I wanna fuck! I wanna fuck! I wanna <em>fuuuuuck!</em>?"

 

[VerbalAbuse]

In American English punctuation, the standard practice is to place the final punctuation mark inside the closing quotation mark, even if it doesn't belong to the quoted material.

 

[alohadave]

Rephrase it:

When your two-year old starts chanting, loudly enough for the entire playground to hear, "I wanna fuck! I wanna fuck! I wanna <em>fuuuuuck!</em>," what do you do?

 

[VerbalAbuse]

which, of course, raises the question whether it should be moved inside the <em> quotation.

 

[Britva415]

which, of course, raises the question whether it should be moved inside the <em> quotation.

No.

 

[VerbalAbuse]

best to take the chicken way out, as @alohadave did.

 

[mildlyaroused]

It never looks good regardless of what's technically right. I'd also argue you should rephrase it. If you want to keep the "What do you do..." at the start, maybe do something like this, with the dialogue in the middle:

What do you do when your two-year-old starts chanting [insert quote] loudly enough for the entire playground to hear?

This structure also sounds the nicest, in my opinion. It flows.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Grammar advice is on point in this thread.

I'm just wondering, if this is for a Lit story, is this going to fly? I mean, I know its completely innocent, but Laurel has a zero-tolerance children near sexual activity policy. Maybe I'm worrying over nothing...

 

[VerbalAbuse]

It never looks good regardless of what's technically right. I'd also argue you should rephrase it. If you want to keep the "What do you do..." at the start, maybe do something like this, with the dialogue in the middle:



This structure also sounds the nicest, in my opinion. It flows.

you know that nicest is just one letter permutation from incest?

 

[mildlyaroused]

I'm just wondering, if this is for a Lit story, is this going to fly? I mean, I know its completely innocent, but Laurel has a zero-tolerance children near sexual activity policy. Maybe I'm worrying over nothing...

I thought that too. I'd definitely recommend the OP puts a note to admin when submitting, but if Laurel says no that's probably justified too.

 

[KeithD]

How do I punctuate this sentence?

(She means fork.)

As you have, except it's "two-year-old" earlier in the sentence.

 

[ElectricBlue]

The kid is saying one thing, and the question contains it. The kid isn't asking the question, therefore the question mark is not part of the dialogue. So it's What you do blah blah, "speech quote!"?

 

[SimonDoom]

According to the Chicago Manual of Style, sec. 6.10, the correct answer in this case is to place the question mark outside the quotation mark. The CMOS gives this specific example:

Which of Shakespeare's characters said, "All the world's a stage"?

Generally speaking, in American style the period or question mark goes inside the quotation mark. But that wouldn't make sense in this case, because the quoted material is not a question; it's a statement.

 

[mildlyaroused]

I’m told I’m really smart but don’t like to talk about myself. I am fairly sure that’s how to punctuate in a sentence like that if kept the same as she/he would like.

Wait, what's this about? I never said otherwise.

 

[mildlyaroused]

No, you are smart too!

Oh yeah