Question Mark

Without question marks, we’d miss out on all kinds of things: invitations, jokes, the Riddler . . .

No doubt, the question mark is a nice little piece of punctuation. And, best of all, it’s easy to use!

What Is a Question Mark For?

The main purpose of a question mark, perhaps unsurprisingly, is to indicate that a sentence is a question. Direct questions often (but not always) begin with a wh- word (who, what, when, where, why).

Why did the chicken cross the road? Who wants to know? Is it really that important?

But, not all questions are phrased as questions. Sometimes we phrase questions the same way we would phrase a declarative sentence. In speech, the way your voice rises at the end of the sentence usually makes it clear that you’re asking a question and not just making a statement. But in writing, you need a question mark to signal to readers that they should read the sentence as a question.

You came all this way to ask me about a chicken? Cross the road? Never!

Phrasing a question as an imperative or declarative statement is an emphatic way to express surprise, doubt, or disbelief.

Question Marks and Quotation Marks

When your sentence is a straightforward question, the question mark goes at the very end and serves as the terminal punctuation mark. But things can get tricky when you have other punctuation nearby.

At first glance, the rules about question marks and quotation marks can seem complicated. But the logic is fairly simple. Keep the question mark inside the quotation marks if it logically applies to what is enclosed by the quotation marks. You’ll often see this in written dialogue:

The chicken asked, “Why is everyone so concerned about where I’m walking?” “What do you have to hide?” asked the nosy reporter.

If the question mark applies to the sentence as a whole instead of to the phrase inside the quotation marks, put it at the very end:

Haven’t you ever heard the expression “It’s a free country”?

This holds true even when you have a quotation containing a question:

“When I spoke to the chicken, she said ‘Why won’t you leave me alone?’” recalled the reporter.

And for a quoted question containing a quoted statement:

“What did the chicken mean,” the reporter wondered, “when she said ‘It’s a free country’?”

When you have a question mark that applies to both the quoted phrase and the rest of the sentence, just use one question mark:

Who said “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

Question Marks and Parentheses

The rules for question marks and parentheses are similar to the rules for question marks and quotation marks. If a question mark applies to the parenthetical information, place the question mark inside the parentheses:

I saw the chicken (or was it the rooster?) crossing the road.

The chicken wrote a bestselling memoir called My Road (published abroad as Who Needs a Crosswalk?).

When the question applies to the whole sentence, put it outside the parentheses:

Will the chicken cross the road again tomorrow (April 1)?

Indirect Questions

There is one type of question that never takes a question mark: the indirect question. Indirect questions are embedded within declarative statements:

The chicken asked whether anyone wanted to cross the road with her. We all wondered why the chicken was so obsessed with that road.

Sometimes, with one-word questions, it’s hard to decide whether it’s a direct or indirect question. In most cases, it’s fine to treat it as an indirect question:

As the chicken contemplated crossing the road, she asked herself why.

When a Question Mark Isn’t Enough

As useful as the question mark is, sometimes it’s tempting to embellish the end of your sentence with extra punctuation, especially when you’re trying to convey something really surprising and exciting.

Did you hear that the chicken crossed the road and found a million dollars on the other side??? Are you saying the chicken is a millionaire?! Can you believe it‽

If you don’t recognize the symbol at the end of the last sentence, it’s called an interrobang, and it’s a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point. Interrobangs, multiple question marks, and combinations of question marks and exclamation points might be fine for casual writing, but in formal writing, it’s best to limit yourself to just a plain old question mark. Sometimes, you can make the choice easy with just a little rewriting:

Did you hear? The chicken found a million dollars on the other side of the road!

And that’s everything you need to know to go out and use the question mark. What are you waiting for?

7 Helpful Tips on How to Write A Memorable Personal Essay

Everyone has a story to tell and a message to share. The challenge lies in getting that story and message out of your head and into print in a way that resonates with your audience.

Starting somewhere in the late 2000s, a certain type of personal essay experienced a popularity boom. These essays were ultra-personal and confessional in nature, often in a TMI sort of way. Their headlines were clickable, not to mention shareable, for their shock value alone.

Although the confessional shock essay’s star seems to be fading, the personal essay itself is still standing strong. Essay collections by late greats like James Baldwin (The First Next Time) and David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster) still top Amazon’s Best Sellers in essays. Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) launched a career with her darkly funny and self-effacing essays about her health and mental illness challenges (Let’s Pretend This Never Happened). Celebrities like Mindy Kaling (Why Not Me?) and Tina Fey (Bossypants) blended personal essays into memoir-esque collections that became best sellers. We head for the nearest bookseller when essay titans like David Sedaris or Anne Lamott have a new release.

We’re thirsty for real stories and musings from people who are able to share their foibles, lessons, and truths in a way we can relate to. Here are seven tips to help you craft a personal essay that will connect with readers.

1 Understand what a personal essay is.

Ask three different experts what a personal essay is and you’ll likely get three different answers. Are they structured? Must they address a certain type of subject? Here’s a definition we like:

A personal essay is a short work of autobiographical nonfiction characterized by a sense of intimacy and a conversational manner. Also called a personal statement.

A type of creative nonfiction, the personal essay is ‘all over the map,’ according to Annie Dillard. ‘There’s nothing you can’t do with it. No subject matter is forbidden, no structure is prescribed. You get to make up your own form every time.’

—Richard Nordquist for ThoughtCo.

Personal essays relate the author’s intimate thoughts and experiences to universal truths. They aren’t simply a retelling of events, though—that falls more in the realm of memoir or autobiography. They conclude with the author having learned, changed, or grown in some way and often present some truth or insight that challenges the reader to draw their own conclusions.

2 Find a compelling topic.

The best essay topics are often deeply relatable. Although the story itself is unique to the author’s experience, there’s some universal truth that speaks to us from just below the surface. Topics like facing a fear, falling in love, overcoming an obstacle, discovering something new, or making a difficult choice tackle feelings and events that happen in everyone’s life.

Here’s a tip: Need a little help? Here’s a list of personal essay topics that might spark an idea.

3 Start with a strong hook.

As with any type of writing, it’s essential to draw the reader in from the very first paragraph, or even the first sentence. Here are a few examples.

Aside from Peter, who supposedly guards the gates of heaven and is a pivotal figure in any number of jokes, the only saint who’s ever remotely interested me is Francis of Assisi, who was friends with the animals.

—David Sedaris, “Untamed”

When I was young, my family didn’t go on outings to the circus or trips to Disneyland. We couldn’t afford them. Instead, we stayed in our small rural West Texas town, and my parents took us to cemeteries.

—Jenny Lawson, “Amelia and Me”

I underwent, during the summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis.

—James Baldwin, “Letter from a Region in My Mind”

Alone, we are doomed. By the same token, we’ve learned that people are impossible, even the ones we love most—especially the ones we love most.

—Anne Lamott, “Blessings: After Catastrophe, A Community Unites”

Your hook and opening paragraph should establish the topic of your essay (or at least allude to it) and set the scene and tone.

4 Create an outline.

All it takes to understand the importance of an outline is listening to someone who struggled to tell a personal story. Often, the story will seem to have no real point. The switchbacks where the teller says “But wait, I have to tell you about this part, first!” are maddening and disruptive. An outline will help you organize your thoughts before committing them to text.

Consider your opening hook and the statement it makes, then map out the sequence of events or main points that support it. Just like a good fictional story, your essay should have rising action. Raise the stakes with each paragraph until you reach a climax or turning point. Plan to add a conclusion that will evoke an emotional response in your reader.

5 Narrow your focus.

Don’t try to write to a general topic. Your essay may well be about sexism, but you need to illustrate it through the lens of a defining incident that’s deeply personal to you. What did your experiences teach you about sexism? What does it mean to you as an individual?

6 Show, don’t tell.

Close your eyes. Think of the scene you’re about to write down. What were you experiencing with your five senses? How did you feel?

Your challenge is to evoke those senses and feelings without flatly stating them. Don’t say “I felt cold.” Say “I exhaled and my breath turned to vapor that hung in the air. I shivered and pulled the blanket tight around my shoulders in a vain attempt to trap my body heat.” Your description should help the reader experience the cold with you. Stephen King describes it as making the reader “prickle with recognition.”

7 Craft a thought-provoking conclusion.

Your essay should end with your own reflection and analysis. What did you learn? How have the events and thoughts you described changed your life or your understanding of life? It’s not enough to say “And that’s what happened.” You have to describe how whatever happened shaped you.

Just as a good lead hooks readers and draws them along for the ride, a good conclusion releases them from your essay’s thrall with a frisson of pleasure, agreement, passion or some other sense of completion. Circling back to your lead in your conclusion is one way to give readers that full-circle sense. Try to restate your thesis in a way that reflects the journey the essay has taken.

—Tom Bentley for Writer’s Digest

There is so much outside the false cloister of private experience; and when you write, you do the work of connecting that terrible privacy to everything beyond it.

—Leslie Jamison for Publishers Weekly

These Roaring Dinosaur Puns Will Help You Cope With Life

Besides being cool, dinosaurs are funny. Chuckling about these amusing extinct animals will help you cope with life. Check out these roaring dinosaur puns!

What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary?

Answer: A thesaurus.

No list of dinosaur puns would be complete without this one. It is one of the oldest jokes in the book!

Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl going to the bathroom?

Answer: (Because the P is silent!)

While you have a giggle about that, take a moment to reflect on the other silent P words in the English language. How many do you know? Hint: These words begin with ps, pn, and pt. We found a vocabulary list with thirteen silent P words. Note: Technically, pterodactyls aren’t dinosaurs. Here’s why.

What do you call it when a dinosaur has a car accident?

Answer: A tyrannosaurus wreck!

Seriously, tyrannosaurs are often the butt of jokes because of their short arms. Thankfully, modern technology can provide extensions for a steering wheel.

Incidentally, if you look up dinosaur in the thesaurus, you will find a list of words that mean “obsolete” and “outmoded”! So, whenever you think that you had a hard day at work, remember, the dinosaurs had it worse! This isn’t actually a pun, but it’s sadly amusing!

Who makes the best prehistoric reptile clothes?

Answer: A dino-sewer!

Pronunciation is key to this pun. If you pronounce sewer like the system that carries away waste products, the joke does not make sense. In this case, sewer is someone who sews. After the release of a popular dinosaur movie, there are memes about velociraptor training all over the Internet. They are certainly scary, but so are most dinosaurs! See if you can figure out this tricky pun about another ancient reptile:

What is the scariest type of dinosaur?

Answer: A Terror-dactyl. Hopefully, these dinosaur puns made you smile. Remember them the next time you have a hard day! Which puns would you add to the list?

Scrabble Day the Writers’ Way

Scrabble enthusiasts have a lot to look forward to as April 13 – Scrabble Day – approaches. Scrabble, which involves forming words with a set number of lettered tiles on a grid-like game board, is one of the most popular word games in the world. It is available in 29 languages, and has become a household name for families and word enthusiasts everywhere.

For grammarians, playing Scrabble can be a fun way to enhance creativity and polish your spelling. It can also, interestingly enough, help to improve your writing. Here’s how:

Spelling

The goal in Scrabble is to use as many lettered tiles as you can to form words, and to gain points by using less common letters (which are worth more points). Not only does this stretch a writer’s vocabulary, but it helps you to think outside the box in creating words that are uncommon and/or more advanced than you may typically think to write. This aspect of Scrabble makes it a great learning tool for both professional writers and student writers. There are also a variety of ways you can bend the rules of the game to encourage spelling prowess. Wikihow.com explains some of the ways you can change the game to help teach spelling in this article.

Flow

When we write English, we construct sentences from left to right and stack our sentences downward. Similarly, Scrabble words are formed from left to right, and flow downward in columns. If even subconsciously, the act of forming words in this manner helps even novice writers to improve their writing skills. By practicing the motion of moving from left to right and then downwards with words, our brain learns not to waste energy on such structural functions because it is already familiar with them.

Creativity

Scrabble rewards the rarity of words and letters. By ranking tiles based on frequency in the English language, the player with the greatest ability to think up uncommon words is often the victor. By thinking of rare words, the Scrabble player is unconsciously developing his or her ability to come up with synonyms (words with the same or similar meanings) on the fly. One important skill among writers is the ability to state things in the most creative terms possible; our work can be enriched using infrequent phrasing and unique synonyms.

Convention

Scrabble teaches us to use specific language. As languages change over time, we tend to incorporate slang into our everyday life – just take a look at urbandictionary.com to get a taste of the immense amount of slang that we use every day. But Scrabble only allows players to form words that can be found in the standard dictionary. While slang is not off limits in writing, practicing official words and definitions can help writers make their work more universally understandable.

Keep in mind that definitions are always being added to the dictionary. Take a look at this list of new dictionary words that Grammarly published in 2012.

Collaboration

In playing Scrabble together, we have the opportunity to take a step away from the television and familiarize ourselves with the simple act of communication. This invariably helps us grow as writers. Much like a writers’ group, Scrabble engenders an atmosphere of competition and creative dispute.

“That’s not a real word!”

“You don’t spell that with a ‘w’.”

So the next time you find yourself sitting down with friends or family to play the popular game of Scrabble, remember to take the time to fully absorb the lessons it has to teach. If you’re a teacher, lighten the mood in your classroom by bringing out the Scrabble board. If you’re an author, give your eyes a break and bust out Scrabble to help give your brain a stretch.

If you’re just looking for something interesting to do, train yourself to be a Scrabble expert – and know that you’re both entertaining and teaching yourself at the same time!

What was your highest Scrabble score? Let us know in the comments!

Q Without U: 9 Must-Know Words to Celebrate Scrabble Day!

This Monday, April 13, is Scrabble Day, and Grammarly is celebrating with our fellow word-lovers, Dictionary.com!

Guest post by Michele Turner, CEO at Dictionary.com

Can you play a Q without a U in Scrabble? Whether you’re playing Scrabble, Words With Friends, or any other fun word game, here is a list of nine high-scoring solutions for the “Q conundrum,” so that you can make winning words with the letter Q — without its traditional letter companion, the U.

• Qi – a variant spelling on the word chi, qi is the vital life force believed to circulate around the body and through the universe in Chinese medicine.
• Qat – an evergreen shrub of Arabia and Africa, the leaves of which are used as a narcotic when chewed or made into a beverage.
• Faqir – a Muslim or Hindu religious ascetic or mendicant monk commonly considered a wonder-worker or a dervish.  Played on a triple word, this term could work wonders for your game. Can also be spelled fakir or faquir.
• QWERTY – yes, this acronym coined in the 1920s to describe the standard keyboard, can be used in the game.
• Qaid – refers to a tribal chief, judge, or senior official, and it stems from the Arabic word meaning “leader.” It entered the English language in the mid-1800s and is sometimes spelled caid.
• Qadi – related to qaid, this word refers to a judge in a Muslim community. It’s a useful variant when trying to stack words to play do or it.
• Sheqel – an ancient unit of weight equivalent to about a quarter or half an ounce. Today it is commonly used to refer to the Israeli currency, though it is also a slang term meaning money. Also spelled shekel.
• Qindar – a monetary denomination in Albania that is equivalent to 100th of a lek, the standard monetary unit. Also spelled qintar.
• Qoph – the 19th letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

Want more for your word game arsenal? Get Scrabble and Words With Friends word values by searching words at Dictionary.com. Search results will show a word’s corresponding score on the right hand side of the page, truly bringing words – and your game – to life! Keep these ten valuable words in mind as well; which will all rack up points in both games.

• Chapeau – a hat.
• Convex – having a surface that is curved or rounded outward.
• Exequy – a funeral procession.
• Frequent – happening or occurring at short intervals.
• Jacquard– a fabric with an elaborately woven pattern produced on a Jacquard loom.
• Jaywalk – to cross a street at a place other than a regular crossing or in a heedless manner, as diagonally or against a traffic light.
• Kumquat – small, round or oblong citrus fruit having a sweet rind and acid pulp, used chiefly for preserves.
• Mystique – an aura of mystery of mystical power surrounding a particular occupation or pursuit.
• Quixotic – extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable.
• Quiz – an informal test or examination of a student or class.

Broadening your command of language by building your vocabulary not only gives you an edge in gameplay, it also translates to better communication skills in all parts of your life.

What’s the best Scrabble word you’ve played? Share in the comments!

About the Author

Michele Turner is CEO of Dictionary.com, providing online and mobile properties that are top destinations for learning and word discovery. Dictionary’s products serve 70 million unique users monthly across mobile and web. Visit www.dictionary.com for all the contextual tools you need to boost your Scrabble or Words With Friends game and truly expand your vocabulary.

Negatives and Negation–Grammar Rules

When you want to express the opposite meaning of a particular word or sentence, you can do it by inserting a negation. Negations are words like no, not, and never. If you wanted to express the opposite of I am here, for example, you could say I am not here.

Below, you’ll find lists of common negative words used to negate ideas.

Negative words:

• No
• Not
• None
• No one
• Nobody
• Nothing
• Neither
• Nowhere
• Never

Negative Adverbs:

• Hardly
• Scarcely
• Barely

Negative verbs

• Doesn’t
• Isn’t
• Wasn’t
• Shouldn’t
• Wouldn’t
• Couldn’t
• Won’t
• Can’t
• Don’t

Remember, when using negatives, make sure you only use one at a time in reference to any particular idea. Otherwise, you will create a double negative, which is an error in English.