Do punctuation marks take on the formatting of the preceding word?

Question

If the last word of a sententece is in boldface, should the question mark be bolded as well?

Which example is correct (see below)?

Example 1: How much did your hip, leg or foot hurt?

Example 2: How much did your hip, leg or foot hurt?

What about a different punctuation mark, like a colon, a comma or a period (see below)?

Example 3: Explain: are you currently sick?

Example 4: Explain: are you currently sick?

Example 5: If your hip hurts, please indicate the intensity of the pain.

Example 6: If your hip hurts, please indicate the intensity of the pain.

Thank you for your input!

Answer 1

I suspect that this is difficult because we have no idea why you are switching typeface in the middle of the sentence. An italicized title, for example, would only have italicized punctuation if it was part of the title.

Hence:

I am reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, and it's robust.

not

I am reading Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, and it's robust.

The rule in this case is that if the item being set off by the distinctive typeface (in this case a book title) would include the punctuation if it was on its own (separate from the sentence) then that punctuation should be in the distinctive typeface. If, on the other hand, the punctuation belongs to the sentence that frames the object then it would not be in the distinctive typeface.

Because you are merely emphasizing individual words with boldface, we would say that the word is what's different than the rest of the sentence. The word should be bold and the punctuation surrounding it should be the same as the rest of the sentence.