What is the best way to write a question with a bloquequote? Where should the question mark be? There are three options depending on where the question mark is:
1) no question mark:
In Spanish, would it work to say:
Necesito trabajar en __.
2) question mark after block quote
In Spanish, would it work to say:
Necesito trabajar en __.
?
3) question mark before block quote
In Spanish, would it work to say?
Necesito trabajar en __.
Consider how we would write it without the blockquote:
In Spanish, would it work to say "Necesito trabajar en__"?
If we substitute the blockquote for the normal quotation marks, we have option 2), which in my opinion looks ugly because of the dangling question mark. So the only option is to rephrase our question slightly:
In Spanish, would it work to say the following?
Necesito trabajar en__.
Actually, this is a problem that vexes me too. I go back and forth between option #1 and option #3. Option #2 is right out. (It's hard to tell what that dangling ? is for.) The primary advantage of #1 is that it makes a clear connection between your text and the quoted text. The advantage of #3 is that it makes clear that the sentence is a question and not an assertion.
¿I wonder if you could take advantage of Spanish's special punctuation to get the best of both worlds:
¿Hay una convención tipográfica en español para esto? No estoy seguro.
If there were, that would be what I'd use.
