If you're using a quote with a period but do not want to end the sentence, do you keep the period?

Question

For example. If I want to quote a passage from a writing, that says

The cake is not a lie.

and my sentence is:

The book by author states that "The cake is not a lie." however studies show that the cake is a lie.

Is it OK to replace the period with a comma to make the sentence flow?

Relevant: Also what do you do with the capital "T" Are you allowed to lowercase it?

The book by author states "the cake is not a lie," however studies show that the cake is a lie.

I usually just work around this by switching up the structure of the sentence, but sometimes I really want to phrase something a particular way.

Answer 1

The best source for such questions is The Chicago Manual of Style. (By "best," I mean that it is most supportive of my existing prejudices.)

15th Edition, Section 11.8 permits these changes (and others) to quotations:

• The intial letter may be changed to a capital or lowercase letter
• The final period may be omitted or changed to a comma

Answer 2

Speaking as a UK person you can not replace a period with a comma. "The cake is not a lie." is a sentence. A sentence ends with a period. You have a sentence. The end of the sentence is a period. You quote the sentence so you quote the full stop. Suppose the test case was "Is the cake a like?". How would you punctuate that? And why should the rules be different for a period and a question mark?

Answer 3

Conservative readers still regard however as an adverb rather than a coordinator, so if you are not to offend them it needs to be preceded by a full stop (or at least a semi-colon). You place the full stop inside the final quotation mark because the full stop is part of the quotation. There is no need for a second full stop. You start the first word of the quotation with a capital letter because that’s what the original does. The passage might then read:

The book by (the?) author states "The cake is not a lie." However, studies show that the cake is a lie.

An alternative would be

The book by (the?) author states "The cake is not a lie", but studies show that the cake is a lie.

In this instance, no full stop is needed after lie.

It is, incidentally, rather a curious thing to say. What on earth does it mean?

Answer 4

I think you can replace the "." with a comma and lower case the "The."

When you quote something, you're taking it out of context. The point of a quote is to reference something, not to be exact in style.

Warning: not an editor so I could be wrong