Q. Does the following sentence require a comma after says? The person who says “I no longer get anything out of reading” has stopped running up against questions to think about as he or she reads.
A. Commas commonly appear before quotation marks—for instance, there is a strong convention of using a comma after expressions like “He said” or “She asked.” There may be a widespread belief that the comma is required before a quotation, although there isn’t necessarily a grammatical reason for one. If a quotation is short or if a comma would interrupt needlessly, you probably don’t need one. In your sentence, the quoted material is a direct object within a dependent clause; a comma would do little to help clarify that.