Q. Can you clarify when a comma should be used before a quote, especially following the word read or said? For example, “Newspaper headlines read, ‘People Are Angry’ and ‘Crime Abounds’” versus “Newspaper headlines read ‘People Are Angry’ and ‘Crime Abounds.’ ”
A. The use of a comma to introduce a quotation is generally a matter of tradition rather than strict logic. That is, it is optional grammatically, but in most contexts readers expect it to follow said and various other dialogue tags. A comma indicates that the quoted material is seen as syntactically independent from the surrounding text. A quote that is seen more clearly as the direct object of a speaking verb, however, does not need a comma: He wrote “Yes” in large letters.