Hey English teachers... I have a punctuation question for you.

[brainshrub]

I'm writing a post for my blog, and I'm not sure about this paragraph:

Perhaps Democratic leaders wish to use public disgust with the occupation of Iraq as a political issue to strengthen their hand on election day in 2008? Perhaps voters, sick with grief after almost six years of violence, will have forgotten the majority party in congress had an opportunity to begin the healing process in May of 2007 - but inexplicably backed down.

Here's my question:

Should I use a period or a question mark after the second sentence? As in:

Perhaps Democratic leaders wish to use public disgust with the occupation of Iraq as a political issue to strengthen their hand on election day in 2008? Perhaps voters, sick with grief after almost six years of violence, will have forgotten the majority party in congress had an opportunity to begin the healing process in May of 2007 - but inexplicably backed down?

[brentspeak]

1. A question mark, because of its use in the prior sentence.

I'm not an English teacher, though. :)

[brentspeak]

2. Actually, you might want to rewrite that second sentence

It isn't immediately clear that the phrase, "but inexplicably backed down", refers to "the majority party in Congress" (Congress should be capitalized); the reader might think you're referring back to the "voters", instead.

[yewberry]

3. Unless you're answering a previously-asked question,

those are both statements. If you're posting as though you were hazarding a guess, then those will be okay left as questions. Otherwise, they're both statements and shouldn't get the question marks.

Does that make sense?

[johnnie]

4. I'm not an english teacher

But they both seem more like a statement to me and there shouldn't be any question marks.

[MassLiberal]

5. no question marks

You might use the inflection of a question mark in your voice if you were speaking these sentences, but as written statements, they should not be posed as questions.

[Goblinmonger]

6. I agree with the above about consistency

Those are both direct statements. Maybe given the context of your blog article, they could be questions but then they both are.

I also kind of agree about the last phrase. I don't think it is ungrammatical to the extent that it is a misplaced modifier, but it would be more clear elsewhere.

You do have another punctuation problem. You used a hyphen "-" when you meant to use a dash "--". But I don't think you need to use a dash there grammatically. I understand you want a bit of a pause there for effect which probably OKs the use of the dash, but I don't like it there.

And I am an English teacher.