Definition:
A sentence that reports a question and ends with a period rather than a question mark.
Examples and Observations:
- "I am constantly asked why I never made other films after There's No Business Like Show Business. The answer is I was never asked."
(Johnnie Ray) - "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them."
(Flannery O'Connor) - "Indirect questions do not close with a question mark but with a period. Like direct questions they demand a response, but they are expressed as declarations without the formal characteristics of a question. That is, they have no inversion, no interrogative words, and no special intonation. We can imagine, for example, a situation in which one person asks another, 'Are you going downtown?' (a direct question). The person addressed does not hear and a bystander says, 'He asked if you were going downtown.' That is an indirect question. It requires an answer, but it is expressed as a statement and so is closed by a period, not a query."
(Thomas S. Kane, The New Oxford Guide to Writing, Oxford University Press, 1988) - "When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked if I had any firearms with me. I said, 'Well, what do you need?'"
(Steven Wright) - "I wonder if other dogs think poodles are members of a weird religious cult."
(Rita Rudner)
Also Known As: indirect interrogatives
