In ALCOHOLISM TREATMENT / Tags: asks, different, fiction, prose, Question, things, three, write, writing /
Question by asthmaman: In the writing of fiction or prose, how does one write a question that asks three different things?
For example, if I want a character to ask something like the following: “Was his behavior the result of alcoholism? Child abuse? Anger management problems?”
I realize the second two questions aren’t complete sentences so is it unconventional to capitalize the first words or should I leave them in lower case?
Best answer:
Answer by Ore
The way you’ve written it, the capitalization is correct. The question marks denotes the end of the first sentence; after that you’ve got sentence fragments, which is typically okay in dialogue or first-person narration (depending on the age/maturity of the narrator).
I might shape the first sentence a little differently (“Could his behavior have been the result of alcoholism?…”), but otherwise that looks fine to me.
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keep them capitalized because they are still new sentences.
If you wrote it as: “Was his behavior the result of alcoholism, child abuse, or possibly anger management problems?” I believe that would be sufficient.