ShmoopTube

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Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by question marks. They got here fast because

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they weren't afraid to ask for directions.

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How should you change the below sentence to make it correct, if at all?

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She asked whether the sentence ended here?

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This is one of those sneaky sentences that's not necessarily a question as a whole, but

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is harboring a question inside of it.

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So we know the original sentence is incorrect, because by putting the question mark at the

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end, it makes it seem like someone is asking whether the girl asked something.

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Not that someone couldn't do that, but it doesn't seem to be what's going on here.

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We can get rid of choice (B) for the exact same reason.

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Nobody's asking whether she's asking anything.

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We can nix (C) for the same reason, and also because "whether" is a conjunction that generally

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signals a choice, not a question.

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This leaves us with (D), the correct answer.

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See, the quotation marks separate the direct question from the rest of the sentence, making

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the sentence a statement about someone asking something,

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instead of a question about someone asking something.

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