But, she added, "it is likely to fail."The answer depends on whether you want the "but" to go with the quote or with the fact that the person is saying such a thing. The difference between those two choices is generally too subtle to worry about, but it is important to avoid a mixed bag in your punctuation. A comma before the attribution indicates that the "But" is part of the thought being attributed, and so the quote, being a continuation of that thought, should not be capitalized as though it were the beginning of a sentence.
If the "But" is meant to apply to the "she added" part, a quote that is a complete sentence should be capitalized like a complete sentence:
But she added, "It is likely to fail."These little markers can be obscured, of course, if the quotation begins with a proper noun or if you have avoided or overcome any lingering trauma from the Strunkwhite caution on beginning a sentence with "However":
However, she added, "John is like to fail."In that case, you could emphasize that "However" isn't being put in the speaker's mouth by using a colon instead of a comma to introduce the quote.
3 comments:
Frankly, I find it a clumsy construction. Having proofed and edited people in the corporate world, I've run into more than my fair share of sentences beginning with a conjunction (and what, exactly, is it conjoining way up there?) that is invariably followed by a comma. People who do this are, in effect, treating the body of the sentence as though it were an independent clause in a compound sentence. And why? Because they insist on beginning sentences with conjunctions.
And I know how tempting this can be. And how forceful it can seem to the ear. But I don't think it is a good practice. And I do think the best solution is to rewrite, perhaps by adding the whole thing, conjunction and all, to the preceding sentence as an independent clause. However, I could be wrong.
Martin, I know you're right; I've just added convincing people to avoid this pitfall to my list of quixotic ventures.
But what I'm saying is this (and I don't doubt you concerning "parts of speech): Words do have functions within the sentence, and what we used to call "conjunctions," in the type of construction I'm referring to, work to join two independent clauses. I find, in most case in which sentences begin with "and" or "but" and in which those words are followed by a comma, that the author's intent is to join that sentence to the previous one, but that author is afraid of writing a sentence that has more than one clause.
This usage and the way that it needlessly separates elements that might better be wedded together in a quest for added emphasis si what, in my opinion, has led to that new and far more dreadful construction: BEST.WHATEVER.EVER.
Here in the States, what we used to call compound sentences are feared and avoided. However (and I have no problem with starting a sentence with "however"), using compound sentences makes for better writing.
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