Do you use a question mark when a sentence starts as a question but then turns into a statement? For example,
- "Can you explain this to me, because I don't understand the second part."
- "What did he just say, because I couldn't hear him over the noise of the television."
I usually use a period but don't know if that is correct.
Best Answer
It's allowed, but mostly inadvisable.
The times it is most allowable are:
You have a series of related questions:
Expressing uncertainty within a sentence:
You are living in the 18th Century. (It used to be more common than now).
It can be confusing though. It's often a good idea to rephrase, especially in formal text because of this potential for confusion. I could easily rephrase my first example just by capitalising. Your example questions can be simply broken into sentences such as:
Or expressed as a single question with a subordinate clause:
Or re-ordered:
My second example can't be re-ordered without losing the effect. This effect would only be suitable in some sort of writing anyway, and the choice is between keeping the risk of confusion, or losing the effect.
(And as for the spaces: Two spaces if you are writing on a manual typewriter something that you intend to be typeset professionally if published. One for all other writing. Typesetting, graphic use of text, and other cases where you're going to pay attention to the weight, block-size, kerning, extender-size relative to leading, etc. would include spacing in a variety of different cases as part of those considerations, but usually would be a space slightly larger than a "single space").