How to avoid punctuation and case missteps in quoted matter

Content aside, quotations can present technical problems for writers.

The following sentences demonstrate issues writers confront when they compose sentences that incorporate quotations that are not framed with attribution (phrasing that identifies the source of the quotation, such as “he said” or “she writes”).

Each example is followed by a discussion of the problem in the sentence and a solution.

1. The consultant’s answer to the question of how to get started is always: “Begin with a plan.”

A quotation should be introduced with a statement that ends with a colon only if the statement is a complete sentence, as in “The consultant’s answer to the question of how to get started is always the same: ‘Begin with a plan.’” Otherwise, the punctuation is only obstructing the syntactical flow of the overarching sentence, so omit it here: “The consultant’s answer to the question of how to get started is always ‘Begin with a plan.’” (The presence of a “to-be” verb—is, in this case—obviates the need for punctuation.) Another exception is if what precedes the quotation is an attribution, as in “When asked for advice, Jones said: ‘Begin with a plan.’” However, in such cases, a simple comma after said suffices.