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Do you always need commas after dialogue tags and detailed locations?

English Language & Usage Asked by copywriterZ on December 10, 2020

I have a couple of questions about commas.

  1. If you quote a short sentence, can you omit the comma after the dialogue tag as a matter of style?

    For instance:

    Whenever I come home, I always say “Honey, I’m home!”

    Is the comma after “say” in this sentence essential? I like the way it reads without it.

  2. When you have a modifying phrase after a location within a location, do you need to use a comma?

    For instance:

    I visited Tokyo, Japan last summer.

    I have seen some sources say this version is correct, while others have said I need a comma after “Japan.”

One Answer

The following is is quoted from the wikiHow article "How to Use Quotation Marks"

Put quotation marks around the dialogue only. Quotation marks are essential for notating dialogue, as they signal to the reader the words are being spoken. For example:

  • “Where is my cat?” the woman screamed.
  • I demanded, “Let me see her.”

Take a look at the last rule at the link below, if the link provided earlier was not enough to prove my point, though it should have been. A country's name is even more obvious than the name of a state, which makes the case for the comma in the sentence in question even stronger: https://grammartips.homestead.com/placecommas.html

The idea of replacing "Tokyo" with "doctor" is absurd. Tokyo is a city, a geographical location, and the rules of geographical location apply to it.

Answered by user384492 on December 10, 2020

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