What kind of punctuation should I use to embed a question in another sentence?


How should I punctuate this sentence? It seem that I should somehow distinguish the question part of the sentence from the main part of the sentence.



If I didn't know the answer, I would first ask, "Which one of these is more important?"



or



If I didn't know the answer, I would first ask, which one of these is more important?



or



If I didn't know the answer, I would first ask which one of these is more important?



Or something else?



Answer



"Distinguishing the question part of the sentence from the main part of the sentence" in this instance is done by putting quotation marks around the quotation and putting a comma before the quotation.



If I didn't know the answer, I would first ask, "Which one of these is more important?"



The first sentence is correct.


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