Comma? Colon? Nothing?

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Futurehuman11

#461133 Sun, 06 Jan 08 02:23 PM

In the sentence below, I'm not sure if I should use punctuation (e.g. a comma or colon) before the quote. Help!

Knight, who was on probation because of previous incidents, was fired in 2000, after 29 years at Indiana, for grabbing the arm of freshman Kent Harvey, who asked him (,?) "Hey, what's up, Knight?" on campus.

Futurehuman11

Joined on Sat, Dec 1 2007

Junior Member (77)

Colons, Commas, Punctuation

Feebs11

#461154 Sun, 06 Jan 08 03:06 PM

"...who had asked him 'Hey,..'." means you can avoid the comma problem.

Feebs11

Joined on Thu, Nov 23 2006

Senior Member (4,928)

Colons, Commas

Yoong Liat

#461155 Sun, 06 Jan 08 03:06 PM

Futurehuman11 wrote:

In the sentence below, I'm not sure if I should use punctuation (e.g. a comma or colon) before the quote. Help!

Knight, who was on probation because of previous incidents, was fired in 2000, after 29 years at Indiana, for grabbing the arm of freshman Kent Harvey, who asked him (,?) "Hey, what's up, Knight?" on campus.

Comma is necessary after 'him'. Question mark is not required.

Yoong Liat

Joined on Mon, Sep 4 2006

Singapore

Veteran Member (6,013)

Yoong Liat

Colons, Commas, Punctuation, Question marks

Grammar Geek

#461158 Sun, 06 Jan 08 03:16 PM

I would certainly put the comma before a direct quote, so perhaps this is a difference between BrE and AmE. However, your sentence has too many parts. The "after 29 years at Indiana" just seems like it's stuck there.

After 29 years at Indiana, Knight--already on probation for prior incidents--was fired in 2000 for grabbing the arm of freshman Kent Harvey, who had said, "Hey, what's up Knight?" on campus.