Do I have to precede a quotation with a comma if the quotation is preceded with "to"?

Asked May 11 '20 at 15:19

Active May 11 '20 at 15:19

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I'm writing a blog post and wanted to figure out if the following sentence was grammatically sound.

Our Sketch above takes a parameter k which roughly translates to "How many users do you want to keep in the Sketch?"

Am I missing a comma? Is the correct form actually

Our Sketch above takes a parameter k which roughly translates to, "How many users do you want to keep in the Sketch?"

asked May 11 '20 at 15:19

Noah Stebbins

That's not a quotation. That's referring to words as words. Or, in this case, a phrase as a phrase. Nobody is actually saying it. As such, there is no reason for a speech tag. You could also dispense with the quotation marks and use italics instead. – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 15:32
The following questions don't specifically reference speech or speech tags (so I'm not certain if this is strictly a duplicate of one or the other), but they are at least related. – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 15:43
Is there punctuation for words treated as words? – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 15:43
What is the best way to mention a word: italics, quotes, or single-quotes (apostrophes)? – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 15:43
How should you punctuate the construction of “She read until she reached the word x.”? – Jason Bassford May 11 '20 at 15:43
Also, k probably doesn’t translate to a question. It represents the answer to a question. So, “Our Sketch above takes a parameter k which represents the number of users that should be kept in the Sketch.” – Jim May 11 '20 at 19:41
Wow, thank you so much! This is my first time posting a grammar question and I find the responses fascinating. – Noah Stebbins May 12 '20 at 17:16

0 Answers0