What's your opinion? Options

[Cole Parker]

I've always gone by the rule that a question mark belongs at the end of a sentence, or at the end of a quotation within a sentence, but not, ever, in the middle of a sentence itself.

For instance, in the following sentence, a question mark can be implied, but certainly wouldn't be added:

She wanted us to go to the movies, but even though I was wondering, which one would she pick from the several options we had, I didn't ask because I knew she'd want to surprise me.

Surprisingly, at least to me, in the past month I've read two books written by established authors that had sentences in them that included a mid-sentence question mark.

Does anyone else here have a problem with that? I think writing the above sentence as: She wanted us to go to the movies, but even though I was wondering, which one would she pick from the several options we had?, I didn't ask because I knew she'd want to surprise me. would be abominable.

Has anyone else seen this usage in printed material?

I know some complex sentences contain very specific questions in them, and the use of a question mark after an ending clause that isn't a question has always seemed to be the choice of the writer; it can be used or ignored, like this:

Why can public transportation be made to work well in Los Angeles; everyone agrees it has been very successful in San Francisco That sentence can end in either a question mark or period. Does everyone agree on that?

C

[Cole Parker]

I certainly agree, and especially if the rule come from Boston, even if it is 4 AM there. Everyone knows intellectual and academic acuity are superior on the East coast.

So the conclusion to be drawn is, the punctuation rule isn't getting looser; the editorial rigor these days is.

C