Chicago, 14th ed., 5.135-136 Who shouted, “Up the establishment!” (Chicago says, “. . . the question is conveyed by the construction, . . .”)
MLA, 5th ed., 2.2.11 Whitman asks, "Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?"
Words into Type, 3rd ed. rev., p. 213 The question has often been asked, [. . .] "Is there an opportunity for women in this field?"
Harbrace College Handbook, 12th ed., p. 164 Why do children keep asking "Why?"
This construction is also supported by GPO and by copyediting doyennes Karen Judd and Amy Einsohn. Sadly, the witty Karen Elizabeth Gordon does not give an example of this form. And APA is vague—“Place other quotation marks [besides periods and commas] inside quotation marks only when they are part of the quoted material.”—and does not cover a quoted question within a question.
When you’re a freelancer, you have a lot of reference books within easy reach.
I also see that Chicago disagrees with me on my “Satan’s piss!” example. Hmmm – you learn something new every day. To me it fails the ILF (It Looks Funny) test to leave out the closing question mark. I’ll have to watch for this one in future mss. and see if it still LF.
I think it’s important to note that unlike the dictionary, style guides aren’t the be-all, end-all of copy editing. If your publication or company chooses to adhere to a particular style guide, that’s great, but often the guides will contradict each other anyway. Consistency is the key.
In this one, I would remove the exclamation point and put the question mark after the quote mark. It is a question, after all.
This one is fine anyway, because the question is the main part of the sentence.
Same as above.
And of course, this one’s fine because both the main part of the sentence and the quote are questions.
We agree on most of it anyway. I don’t like the way your first example reads, but if that’s what Chicago says …
Thanks to dantheman for the reply several posts above. Every time I get to thinking I have the remotest clue about my job, it trips some sort of alarm in fate headquarters and the Be Humble Hammer comes smashing down.
The latest? In a headline for the Sunday edition, I managed to write that a festival drew “crows” rather than “crowds.” I’m just pleased that it was low down on page two, rather than above the fold on page one, but I dread the return to work tomorrow. Sigh.
Thanks, dantheman, though it would have been more fun if The Black Crowes or Counting Crows had been headliners for the event.
Actually, it was a pretty nifty little festival which I wanted to boost by giving an extra mention. Of course, I threw it in at the very last minute, which is really asking for trouble.
In the immortal words of Kurt Vonnegut and Linda Ellerbee,“and so it goes.” Experience teaches me it won’t be the first nor the last. It will, however, be a candidate for our state newspaper association’s annual blooper award. The “winner” gets to keep and prominently display a large oil painting showing an irate circus manager in a newspaper office pointing to a circus poster touting one date for the performance, and a copy of the paper bearing a completely different date. (We’re a fun bunch in Oregon.)
