He said “she is pretty” [closed]

Question

How to correctly punctuate this?

He said "she is pretty".

Is a comma a must after 'said'? Do we need to make 's' in 'she' capitalized?

Answer 1

There are two common styles, referred to as "American" and "British" though each is found in each place.

In both, ?, :, and ! is always inside if it belongs to the quoted part, outside if it belongs to the use itself:

He said, “She is pretty?” (He inflected it as a question).

He said, “She is pretty”? (He may have said it, I the writer am asking).

For commas and periods, American style always puts the period inside the quotes:

He said, “She is pretty.”

British style puts it in the quotes if it was part of the quote:

He said, “She is pretty.” (And he finished his sentence with that)

He said, “She is pretty”. (And may have gone on to say more in that sentence).

Some who favour American style favour British style in technical contexts where it may be more important to make sure the reader knows if the period is part of the quoted text (e.g. it could make a big difference if quoting computer code).

Less common styles include play format:

He said: She is pretty.

Play format with quotes:

He said: “She is pretty.” (period may follow British or American rules.

And James Joyce style:

— She is pretty.

Which as much as I quite like it, you only gets to use if you'r James Joyce, and few editors will put up with from anyone else.

You would normally capitalise within the quotes. If you want to signify that something had gone before within the same sentence, then you might use ellipses:

He said, “…she is pretty”.

But not if running a quote into a sentence as in:

He described her as “pretty” and I had to agree.

Left and right quotes like “ and ” should be favoured where possible, but informal contexts can tolerate straight quote like ". I would normally use " here without worry, but for this particular post being on the topic of quotation marks.

Answer 2

Standard British punctuation for speech is:

He said, "She is pretty."

Note the full stop inside the inverted commas - he spoke a sentence which ended with pretty, and then he stopped speaking.

Answer 3

Jon Hanna has explained the difference between British and American practice. The late R L Trask (a distinguished academic linguist, born in New York State, but who worked in the UK) sets out the arguments here, coming down in favour of the British way, or the logical way, as he calls it. He is also quite definitely of the view that no comma is required immediately before opening quotation marks. He makes a good case, but his advice conflicts with the practice of many publishers.

You need to start the quoted speech with a capital letter because it's the start of a sentence.

Answer 4

I'd use a colon

He said: "she is pretty".

unless you mean something like

...and then he said that she is pretty.