Learn English Translation and Essay Writing

Question Mark (?)

A question mark (?) is placed at the end of a sentence which is a direct question.

Examples:

1-     What is the capital of Iran?

2-     Do you have a pen I can borrow?

3-     In which country did saffron originate?

 If the question is a direct quotation, repeating the speaker's exact words, a question mark is still used.

Examples:

1-"Have you a pencil I can borrow?" she asked.

2-"How many of you have computers at home?" inquired the teacher.

 But a question mark is not used in an indirect question, in which the speaker's exact words are not repeated:

 1-     She asked if I had a pencil she could borrow.

2-     The teacher asked how many of us had computers at home.

 Here only a full stop is used, since the whole sentence is now a statement.

The question mark also has one minor use: it may be inserted into the middle of something, inside parentheses, to show that something is uncertain.

Examples:

1- The famous allegorical poem Piers Plowman is attributed to William Langland (?1332­?1400).

 2- That beautiful miniature portrait   contains the personal name Behzad (?).

 The question marks on the poet's birth and death dates indicate that those dates are not certain, and the one in the second example indicates that the reading of the name is possibly doubtful.