Question mark after a comma and a second sentence?

Question

A non-English native friend has just said that an English speaker told him the question mark should NOT be used after a pair of sentences separated by a comma. Something like this:

"Could someone else have done that, as she was on holidays"

I am also a non-native speaker and am not a language expert but I find this construction quite strange. I would use the question mark here, even if the second sentence is not interrogative. From my point of view, the question is in the first sentence but the second does not act as a separate statement.

Help? Many thanks for your thoughts.

Does this answer your question? Question mark for sentence which starts with a question but doesn't end with one (punctuating << Can you book a room in advance, because otherwise we'd be in trouble >>) — Edwin Ashworth, May 11 '21 at 13:52
It does, many thanks, Edwin. I had searched before posting but as I couldn't find a good description of the issue, didn't come across this one :) — Tonia, May 11 '21 at 14:55

Peter Shor · Accepted Answer · 2021-05-11T14:55:00.673

0

There should be a question mark after it, as it is a question.

One or two centuries ago, you could have put the question mark in the middle of the sentence:

Could someone else have done that? as she was on holidays,

which better reflects the intonation used in speech.

But in contemporary English writing, the general practice is to put question marks only at the end of a sentence. See the answers to this question. There are still some sources that say you can use a question mark in the middle of a sentence, but it is not done very often.

edited May 11 '21 at 14:55

answered May 11 '21 at 13:43

Peter Shor

88,407

That question covers repeated questions with deletions. There is a precise duplicate. // I seem to remember the sentence-medial question mark being used in some quality recent fiction. – Edwin Ashworth May 11 '21 at 13:56

Question mark after a comma and a second sentence?

1 Answers1