punctuation - How should a question which quotes a question be punctuated?


Suppose there is a sentence in question form, like the one appearing below:



Where do you belong to?



Now, if a speaker refers to that question, he will frame another sentence and will place the question in the quotation marks in that sentence, like what is appearing below:



They said, "Where do you belong to?"



Now, if the speaker wants to convert this sentence too in question form, he will put the original question in another question, like what is appearing below:



What did they mean by saying "Where do you belong to?"



Now, if the speaker wants to rephrase this sentence, it would become as follows:



By saying "Where do you belong to?" what did they mean?



My question is how the 4th sentence is to be punctuated. It has two question marks in it. Does the sentence correctly take two question marks? If so, why will the 3rd sentence not take two question marks − one, just before the closing inverted commas and, the second, just after those commas? The 4th sentence and the 3rd sentence are all same, except being a bit different in placement of the words. Will they take two different sets of punctuation marks?



Answer



One clue is how this is said. The question mark is a written indication of spoken intonation.


The quoted question is not phrased as a question, with rising intonation. It's said as though its punctuation is



By saying "Where do you belong to," what did they mean?



and there is no reason not to punctuate it that way.


This punctuation reduces the importance of the quoted question. You are not asking that question; you are asking "What did they mean?" It's that sentence which gets the question intonation which the question mark represents.


It can be rationalised, if a rule is wanted, by saying that where a quote runs on into the rest of the sentence, any punctuation at the end of the quote is generally a comma. It's only not a comma where the spoken intonation indicates that it's not.


This is how a question mark can appear in a sentence like



What did they mean by saying "Where do you belong to?"



Both the "inner" question and the "outer" question end in the same place, and both need a question mark. In this case, there's a convention that punctuation is not duplicated and it's the inner question which prevails. Again, how that sentence is spoken provides a clue because the intonation of belong to is the same no matter where the question mark is placed (or even how many there are):



What did they mean by saying "Where do you belong to?"
What did they mean by saying "Where do you belong to?"?
What did they mean by saying "Where do you belong to"?



All of those sentences are pronounced the same, but only the first really makes sense visually, which is where the convention comes in.


If you do in fact pronounce the first and third differently, then you get to decide which you use. It's entirely possible that the pronunciation is context-dependent, in which case the punctuation is, too.


I suppose the same goes for a quoted question in the middle of a sentence. If you pronounce your sentence with a question intonation on the quoted question itself as well as the entire thing, then it may be appropriate to put a question mark there.


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