How on earth are we going to clear all this up, I wonder as I reach the living room?

Is that right? The question mark looks a bit odd separated from the actualy question like that.

I think in that situation I wouldn't include the question mark and would just end with a full stop.

But I'm an instinctive rather than a knowledgeable punctuator, so I may be wrong

You could skirt round the issue...

I reach the living room and my heart sinks. How on earth are we going to clear all this up?

Technically, it shouldn't have a question mark, because the whole sentence isn't a question. And I think your comma is in the right place, marking off the first clause.

Talking of punctuation, Katerina posted a fandabbydozious link to a site about, which is by a country mile the best I've come across.

These are the ones I've given my students, but the whole site is well worth a good old nose round. Kat has earned the passionate gratitude of my fellow OU lecturers:

Dangling Modifiers, including the subset which is dangling participles:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_30.htm
Commas in general:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_06.htm
Comma splices in particular:
http://www.bristol.ac.uk/arts/exercises/grammar/grammar_tutorial/page_07.htm

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Or, yes, use Flora's solution, and put the question on its own

Actually, I'd probably be inclinced to write it with two commas: 'How on earth are we going to clear all this up, I wonder, as I reach the living room?'

Flora's solution is more elegant, but it does depend a bit on the rhythm of the surrounding sentences. I find now and then I really want to modify a question or tag an action onto it because it just feels right in terms of the beats of the sentences.

Thanks for the links, Emma. Great resource. I never knew there was such as thing as an Oxford comma!

I would personally put thought in italics.

Like this:

How on earth are we going to clear all this up? I wonder as I reach the living room?

Stormme x

Interesting, Stormee, not thought of that before.

In the old days, you'd just put the darn thing in "" anyway:

"How on earth are we going to clear all this up?" I wonder as I reach the living room?

I've always assumed that putting thoughts in italics is an attempt to cope with "" having come to be reserved for spoken-aloud stuff only. I know it's house style for some children's publishers, but FWIW, I need italics for too many other things to go that way.

Of course if you were in past tense there's the proper free-indirect option, which is what I'd usually do:

"How on earth were we going clear this up, I wondered as I reached the living room."

One of the definite drawbacks of narrative in present tense is that you've such a narrower range of tenses available to you - it's less flexible - and so free indirect style doesn't work properly in present tenst narrative.

How on earth I we going to clear this up, I wonder, as I reach the living room.

That's what I'd write.

If you keep the existing sentence then I find Jem's comma placement most readable.

Or, depending on the rest of the story, you could have somethng like:

An empty vodka bottle sits on the bottom stair. Across the hall, a trail of Bombay Mix and cigarette ash leads into the living room.
The air is still thick with the odour of stale beer and dead fags.
How on earth are we going to clear all this up?


How on earth are we going to clear all this up, I wonder as I reach the living room?

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Just noticed that you'd already chosen the two comma version yourself earlier.

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The 'wondering' how it will be cleared up is then implied rather than explicitly stated.

If my example was expaned upon, it might go:

How on earth are we going to clear all this up?

There's a spongy, sucking quality to the carpet. Eighty percent wool, twenty percent lager.

In the kitchen, the drainer is stacked with rancid plates, every glass in the house and saucers encrusted with ash.

I open the drawer. Unsurprisingly, the bin bags haven't been touched.

Ah, yes, the parenthetical comma:

How on earth I we going to clear this up, I wonder, as I reach the living room.

versus the comma before a co-ordinating conjunction:

How on earth I we going to clear this up I wonder, as I reach the living room.

versus the comma separating off the introductory elements in a sentence:

How on earth I we going to clear this up, I wonder as I reach the living room.

They're all entirely correct.

At which point I think you go for the one which suits the rhythm of the sentence - i.e. the voice - best. As David Crystal says, punctuation has two sometimes conflicting jobs: expresses grammatical meaning, and expresses how something is actually said.

It's one of the fights I've had with US copy-editors in particular: they always seem to want to turn everything to parenthetical commas, and often that's not appropriate, especially in anything as voice-y as fiction...

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I can feel a blog post coming on. It's a while since I've done anything that technical

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Super-technically, I'm not sure "as" is a co-ordinating conjunction. But there are limits to even my punctuation-nerdiness...

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ERRATUM

in the examples, for "I" read "are"...

ERRATUM

Faith shattered, words failing, bubbles burst.

Gaius!

Faith shattered, words failing, bubbles burst.

Well, I would blame a slip of Jem's fingers, except that I take full responsibility for cutting-and-pasting someone else's post without checking...

Mea Farrow. Since we're speaking Latin.

Sic biscuitus disintegratum.