Quoted Speech

First, make sure the quoted words are correctly punctuated to begin with. Here are the sentences I will be using for examples on this page:

• The song of the Siren is deadly for any man to hear.
• Have you done as I commanded and sealed your ears with wax?
• Let me go, men! The Siren's song is calling to me.

When you combine quoted speech with a verb of speaking, you do not change the capitalization of the quoted speech, but there are special rules of punctuation for joining the quoted words to the main clause.

When the main clause comes first, you just put quotation marks around the quoted speech and join the quote to the main clause with a comma. Examples:

• Odysseus said to the sailors, "The song of the Siren is deadly for any man to hear."
• Odysseus asked the sailors, "Have you done as I commanded and sealed your ears with wax?"
  
• Odysseus shouted at the sailors, "Let me go, men! The Siren's song is calling to me."

When you have the verb of speaking at the end, you put the quoted words in quotation marks and replace the final period of the quoted speech with a comma. If the quoted speech ends with a question mark or an exclamation mark, you leave that mark in place and do not use a comma. Examples:

• "The song of the Siren is deadly for any man to hear," Odysseus said to the sailors.
• "Have you done as I commanded and sealed your ears with wax?" Odysseus asked the sailors.
  (The question mark ends the quoted speech and you do not need a comma to join it to the main clause.)
  
• "Let me go, men! The Siren's song is calling to me," Odysseus shouted at the sailors.

You can also insert the verb of speaking into the quoted speech, which requires that you close the quote and then start it up again. If the first chunk of quoted words is not a complete sentence, you need to use a comma to resume the quoted speech. Otherwise, you end the first sentence with a period before resuming the quoted speech.

• "The song of the Siren," Odysseus said to the sailors, "is deadly for any man to hear."
  
• "Have you done as I commanded," Odysseus asked the sailors, "and sealed your ears with wax?"
• "Let me go, men!" Odysseus shouted at the sailors. "The Siren's song is calling to me."
  (The first chunk of quoted speech is a complete sentence, so there is a period before the quoted speech resumes.)

There are many verbs of speaking which can introduce direct quoted speech, but the word "speak" is not one of those words, oddly enough! For more information about direct quotations, see Purdue's OWL. Note also that there are special rules for quoted speech longer than one paragraph.

---

Here you can see Odysseus tied to the mast, able to hear the song of the Sirens, while his sailors all have wax in their ears and are not affected by the song. For more information, see Wikipedia.

(image source)