Commas before quotation marks

[Ray McCarthy]

It isn't a quote; it's quoted speech

So nested quotes, of alternate type is correct, italics are not. But I confess I'm unsure about the comma. I must re-read Eat Shoots and Leaves. The Penguin guide to Punctuation is very weak on speech as is Essential English by Harold Evans. All the books I have on punctuation and grammar seem more orientated to articles, letters, manuals, technical writing etc. The books I have on writing fiction don't bother with things like punctuation or grammar, they just take it as given that that is a minor issue compared to the "hook", characters, show vs tell, suspense, plot etc.

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

It isn't a quote; it's quoted speech (followed by 'he says').

Aargh! I think I'm getting too old. Everything used to be so simple, from my position of happy ignorance. *removes italics* Back to the drawing board, and thank you.

 

[prizzley]

The easiest way to check for this sort of thing is to make sure that each quotation** mark is paired with another one, and that not quotation mark is paired with more than one other one.

** - Obviously, this does not apply to apostrophes.

Pages on my iMac does this check for me (the only thing it does better than MS Word). However, it cannot spot the difference between apostrophes and quotes. Fortunately, I can.

 

[HareBrain]

The single quotation marks I've put in bold and red (and underlined) should not be there.

Ooh, quite right. Bears' eyes are clearly better than hares' -- I didn't even see it!

 

[Kerrybuchanan]

Bears' eyes are clearly better than hares' -- I didn't even see it!

Neither did I, and I typed it--

 

[Ursa major]

Bears' eyes are clearly better than hares'

It's because a single quote next to a double quote -- which looks like a malformed triple quote -- irritates me, even when I know it's there for a good reason. And such irritation (which seems to me to be a subconscious reaction, given it doesn't rely on there being a mistake) is far better at scanning** than my conscious mind.


** - Which further suggests that my subconscious is, at least in this case, looking for a reason to be irritated.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

triple quotes are a thing? I mean are there there ones that are not malformed?

 

[Ursa major]

It's worse than that! They can be deformed in two different ways: '" and "'.

(But at least with the examples above, there's some sort of symmetry.)

 

[tinkerdan]

From Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness
Nested quotes inside nested quotes compounded by the first nest containing quotes from two other people one of which supplies the next nested quote.

[Marlow said,] “…The fat man sighed. ‘Very sad.’ ‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,’ continued the other; ‘he bothered me enough when he was here. “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.” Conceive you—that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it’s—’ Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. …”

[Marlow said,] “…The fat man sighed.

• ‘Very sad.’

o ‘And the pestiferous absurdity of his talk,’ continued the other; ‘he bothered me enough when he was here.

 “Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a center for trade of course, but also for humanizing, improving, instructing.”​

o Conceive you—that ass! And he wants to be manager! No, it’s—’​

Here he got choked by excessive indignation, and I lifted my head the least bit. …”

 

[TonyHarmsworth]

"I think I'll disagree, and that's my final word." he said.
A comma implies the sentence goes on, is unfinished, that there's something left to add.
"That's the end." she intoned.
"Not with a comma at the end it's not," he chuckled.

If the context lets you know who is speaking then you do not need 'he said' at all so the sentence:
"I think I'll disagree, and that is my final word."
is fine if the responder is obvious.
However, full stops separate sentences. In your book the sentence does not end until the the period after the word said. On that criterion the period after word is definitely incorrect. Sorry if this is all six years too late.