Commas

Q. I’ve got a run-in list in which one of the items is a quoted question. The author put the comma after the closing quotation mark, which looks odd, but so does no comma at all. Any suggestions? The sentence: She can ask herself, “Why?”, formulate her own response, and see which option it closely matches.

A. Keep the comma but put it inside the quotation marks. See CMOS 6.134.

[This answer relies on the 18th edition of CMOS (2024) unless otherwise noted.]