I'm a young folker to your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today we'll talk about some hardcore grammar.

This segment is by Neil Whitman, so when I say I, that's actually Neil.

I saw a family calendar for sale in a gift shop last week.

Underneath the label was the explanatory phrase, who does what and goes where when?

That phrase is a good illustration of several rules about how we form questions in English

that you may not have considered before.

First, let's talk about whether that description of the calendar is actually a question.

It wasn't punctuated with a question mark after all.

It wasn't me asking personally as I stood there looking at it, who does what?

Who goes where when?

Instead, the description was telling me this calendar will answer the questions of who

does what and who goes where when.

Or at least it will after I buy it and fill in all those names and dates and locations.

Questions that are implied as part of a statement are called indirect questions.

Unlike a direct question like what did you do?

An indirect question isn't a complete sentence.

Instead, it acts as a noun phrase inside a larger sentence.

For example, it could be the direct object of a verb like no, and I'd like to know who

does what and goes where when.

I used an indirect question as the object of the preposition of a few sentences ago when

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