Please help

Comment by Mark A. Santomieri on March 20, 2010 at 10:34pm

Hey, Erica!
Take a deep breath and relax. It's not all that hard to think about.
Typically, when your character is asking a question, that is in quotation marks, front and back.
So: "Hi! Please help! How do I have my character ask a question?" Erica asked.
There are acceptable variations, but remember that your character is the one speaking, not you. There is a tendency to use the comma as a safety net here, but most would ignore it. Think of it as talking.
So here is an example to the point:

Mark looked around his desk for his lost notebook. Of course, as usual, his wife walked in with it in hand. She smirked as she shook it about in front of him.
"Did you lose something, sweetheart?" she asked.
"Temporarily misplaced, I think. Where did you find it?" he grumped.
"In the trash bin with the empty bill envelopes."

Now we move on to the exclamation and how and why that works. . .

One may use both the question mark and the exclamation in the same sentence, however it is highly unadvised. Use your character's tone to describe the question:
"You did this, didn't you? Tossed my book in the bin?" Mark was getting upset.

This is what is called a dialogue cradle. You don't always have to write "He said." You are allowed to continue the action by describing it in the same dialogue stream.

The Chicago Manual of Style illumates some of your issues. One reccommends that you pick one up.

My Best
M,

Comment by erika on April 2, 2010 at 12:08am

Thank you

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