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I recently encountered a quirky situation. A student wrote a sentence, and it was much more technical than this example (actually for a literature review on microbiology), but this examples illustrates the basic issue:

John said, "The cat is on the table" with great anger.

A parallel example:

John said, "The cat is on the table" when the cat climbed up.

I was always taught to offset complete quotations with commas, but I tend to only see examples with the signal phrase beginning or ending the quotation (e.g. "The cat is on the table," said John...). While I understand the sentences could easily be rearranged to terminate with the quotations and to improve style (e.g. With great anger, John said...), how should these be punctuated as they stand? Should there be a comma where the quotation terminates? Obviously, if the quotation were a regular clause, no comma would be used (the first due to a prep phrase, the second a dependent clause following an independent). But how does the quotation impact this rule? Thank you!

Jeffbluesky
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    Does this answer your question? Punctuation of a Direct Quote 'The majority of people do not adhere to the guidelines regarding the use of commas and colons with quotations. Nowadays, it is acceptable to introduce a quotation with a comma, a colon or nothing.... (The terminal punctuation is not addressed explicitly here ... but the freedom allowed to the writer surely holds here too.) Medial question/exclamation marks still persist. I'd write 'John said "The cat is on the table" with some surprise.' – Edwin Ashworth Nov 16 '23 at 14:45
  • There's a difference between quotations in academic papers where punctuation is often minimal, and punctuating dialog in fiction, where it tends to be offset by commas if nothing else is used. But this question seems to be about academic papers in which case read your style guide. – Stuart F Nov 16 '23 at 15:40
  • ... Yes; it would seem the examples are inappropriate, changing the register. When there are arbitrary rules (there being no English punctuation czar), and there are more likely to be in technical institutions, go with their requirements. These may differ from institution to institution, and questions involving such are not really suitable on ELU, which looks largely at general English usage. Rulings boil down to competing style preferences, and hence opinion. – Edwin Ashworth Nov 16 '23 at 16:40

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