익명 22:11

Is there a comma before "and why?" at the end of a question?

Is there a comma before "and why?" at the end of a question?

If so, would I also put commas if a question ended with "why or why not?"

Ex: Are you going to bake cookies, and why, or why not?



Top Answer/Comment:

The sentence, with or without commas or full stop, seems ungrammatical to me as there is nothing indicating what the “why” refers to. I can only see the question of punctuation occurring if quoted as reported speech, in which case the punctuation depends on the way the quoted speech was spoken — the length of any pause.

The grammatical equivalent would, in my view, be:

Are you going to bake cookies, and if so why, and (or) if not, why not?

However I imagine that in real life situations only “why?” or “why not?” would be appropriate, depending on context.

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