For the serious grammarians

[drwex]

Those of you who think creative spelling is amusing and refer to the punctuation-aware with pejorative terms can just skip right along.

Now, for the rest of us, I quote a sentence from a recent BBC New story:

Banksy has replaced Hilton's CD with his own remixes and given them titles such as Why am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

I find the use of question mark-comma particularly odd. If that's appropriate, why not end the sentence with a period? Why not put the song titles in quotes, or at least italics? Discuss!

(original here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/5310416.stm, link courtesy of coslinks)

Comments

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

It's possible that the titles had been italicized (or underlined), and that this managed to get dropped in transcription.

I like to think the best of people, until I have evidence otherwise.

[drwex]

It's possible. I think the BBC online is a separate outfit and original-produces its content. But you're right, there might've been some transcription involved.