The Word Cloud

This might sound daft but .............

'Where have you been?' she asked, putting the telephone down.

There's a ? and it's followed up be she asked.

Could you dispense with the ? in this instance?

'Where have you been!' she asked, putting the telephone down.

Does that work better, but wouldn't she have exclaimed then?

Um?

Eddytip

I would still use a question mark. Putting in the exclamation mark simply looks wrong to me. I understand what you're trying to achieve, but I think a better way of getting that across to the reader would be to describe what the woman does after she asks the question. This would depend on whether she was angry, so she might say something like 'Where the hell have you been?', or amused, in which case she might say 'Where have you been? I was beginning to think you'd run away to sea' [or whatever seems an appropriate response!]

What I think you can dispense with is the 'she asked' tag at the end of the question. If you want to make it clear who's doing the talking, you could give her something to do. So, for instance, if she's angry, you could have:

'Where have you been?' She banged down the telephone. 'I've been ringing you all bloody morning!'

I hope this helps.

Spangles

Eddy