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How do you indicate a question (as in an uncertain statement) mid-sentence? My first thought was:

"That's Fred and his—cousin?—by the punch bowl."

But if you take out the parenthetical, you're left with:

"That's Fred and his by the punch bowl."

Which makes no sense.

I considered this:

"That's Fred and his cousin(?) by the punch bowl."

But I feel like it breaks some sort of grammar rule. (Does it? Is a question mark in brackets allowed?)

I also tried:

"That's Fred and his... cousin, by the punch bowl."

"That's Fred and his... cousin? by the punch bowl."

But the first one gives off the wrong message for me. More like the speaker had to pause to remember their precise relation, rather than that they're unsure if they've got it right.

And the second example brings the issue of not capitalising after the '?'.

I don't know. Is there a good way to show this? (Without just restructuring the sentence—I want to know how to punctuate this specific turn of phrase, not make it a non-issue.)

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    If you're writing formal English, you're supposed to capitalize the word after a question mark. But is this formal English? it sounds more like dialog.
    – Peter Shor
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 0:28
  • It is dialogue, yes. Is there an allowance for not capitalising in that case?
    – Tibbie
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 3:35
  • The 'rule' the sentence must remain totally acceptable if the parenthetical is removed is generally conceded to have the exception involving an example like 'It's an (almost entirely) black bird'. Few would consider "That's Fred and his – cousin, is it? – by the punch bowl." or even "That's Fred and his – cousin? – by the punch bowl." to be unacceptable, especially in informal writing or giving an accurate quote of direct speech, though some might want either to modify the 'rule' or class this as a quasi-parenthetical.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 13:24
  • There is a big difference between something that is only written and something that is spoken. If you are writing dialogue, you are sometimes using an inexact transcription of what is actually said. For instance, people don't speak punctuation. Any punctuation used is just a approximation of what was said—or a way of making it understandable when read rather than heard. In short, I find nothing at all wrong with the original sentence as a transcription of dialogue. Let's also not forget that people say things that are ungrammatical all the time. So, why not transcribe it that way?
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 18:50
  • @EdwinAshworth, you and the next commenter seem to have answered my question best. (My first thought was alright after all.) If one of you wanted to do a proper answer, I'd mark it as accepted.
    – Tibbie
    Commented Dec 15, 2019 at 21:56

2 Answers 2

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Assuming that the sentence is going to appear as dialogue in a play or screenplay, I think Mike Graham's punctuation suggestion is quite good:

That's Fred and his...cousin?...by the punch bowl.

The ellipsis points convey the hesitation that would be natural when a speaker attempts to identity someone without being sure of who that person is, and (arguably) the italics for "cousin?" stresses the uncertainty of the identification.

Another syntactically acceptable alternative would be to punctuate the sentence as follows:

That's Fred—and his cousin?—by the punch bowl.

Unfortunately, this approach springs the question mark on the reader rather unexpectedly and doesn't explicitly signal a pause before the word "cousin," which the author wish to do. Adding italics to "cousin?" in this instance might be read as indicating surprise or exasperation, rather than uncertainty, so I would be inclined not to use italics here.

If you want to emphasize a pause by the speaker between "his" and "cousin," the best approach might be to use both em dashes and ellipsis points:

That's Fred—and his...cousin?—by the punch bowl.

This combination breaks the uncertain part of the statement (the identity of the other person at the punch bowl) from the part of the sentence that the speaker is completely confident in making ("That's Fred by the punch bowl"), and it reflects the speaker's hesitation at the point where he or she is about to hazard the uncertain ID ("and his...cousin?").

Of course, in a screenplay or play script, you can also insert stage directions in square brackets in dialogue, though this can be bothersome to people reading the script if done to excess:

That's Fred—and his [pause] cousin?—by the punch bowl.

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In informal, written communication the parenthetical question mark is very familiar. "That's Fred and his cousin(?) by the punch bowl." is very natural.

In writing dialogue, such as in fiction or journalism, the use of the parenthetical question mark would be jarring.

I would probably write something like

"That's Fred and his...cousin?...by the punch bowl."

or any number of phrasings where

"That's Fred and his..." Diya offered her best recollection, "...cousin by the punch bowl."

You rule out one option because, removing the aside, the sentence does not make sense. That's fine. Since you are writing dialogue, you are trying to show the way people speak. You do not need to meet the same set of standards you would with your exposition.

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