I'm trying to figure out where should I place an iterrogation mark in the sentence below. First, what I want to say:
Does X mean X, or does it mean Y? As we talked before about X meaning Y.
And here is the way I'd like to write it:
Does X mean X, or does it mean Y -- as we talked before?
Although I write things that way very often, I'm not sure this grammatical construction is allowed. Is the ?
correctly placed (gramatically, I mean), or should I write it differently? This way looks very strange to me:
Does X mean X, or does it mean Y? -- as we talked before.
but sometimes seems more correct than the first one. Any references on where to place an interrogation mark while writing a question with a dashed-comment?
P.S.: I'm not a native english speaker, yet I actually do not know the answer for this question neither in english nor in portuguese (my native language).