Comma-Usage Tip of the Day

When a direct quotation is used as a syntactic part of a sentence, it isn't introduced by a comma.

Today I encountered this sentence:

Edwards says that you should, "Put your cell phone on vibrate or leave it in your own office so it's not a distraction."

In this writer's case, I think the error was just an absentminded slip. But many people have learned that all quotations are introduced by a comma. In fact, only quotations that function as quotations (and are introduced by a word such as say or ask) are. So this sentence should be styled thus:

Edwards says that you should "put your cell phone on vibrate, or leave it in your office, so it's not a distraction."

or

Edwards advises, "Put your cell phone on vibrate, or leave it in your office, so it's not a distraction."

I also cut the word own (often an unnecessary filler word) from the original and repunctuated the quotation. The original wasn't strictly incorrect (just a more open style of punctuation), but the three short clauses felt messily piled up. I styled "or leave it in your office" as a complementary element—I think it reads better that way.

Read "5 Ways You Bug Your Boss."