Which sentence places a question mark within quotation marks?

• A. He asked, "Are you coming?"
• B. He asked, "Are you coming"?
• C. He asked, Are you coming?"
• D. He asked,"Are you coming?"

Answer: (A)

The main rule here is that punctuation that belongs to the quoted material goes inside the quotation marks. The quoted part is a complete question, so its question mark stays inside the marks. The reporting clause “He asked” is separated from the quote with a comma, which is the correct way to introduce a quoted sentence. So the sentence should read: He asked, "Are you coming?" This keeps the question mark with the quoted question and uses the comma to set off the reporting clause.

The other options misplace punctuation or quotes: placing the question mark after the closing quote would imply the overall sentence is a question rather than the quoted material, omitting the opening quotation mark is incorrect, and missing space after the comma is a formatting error.