: Re: Is it good formatting to bookend quotations with a comma when they occur in the middle of narration? Consider the sample sentence below from a novel. As he stared at it, Emma announced

@Fox6458700

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When adding a quote in a sentence, a first comma is always added before the quote starts. For example,

She cried, "Don't leave."

Similarly, if the sentence is starting with the quote instead, the comma follows it. For example,

"Don't leave", she cried.

So, in short, if simple, non quoted words are present before or after the quote, they are always separated from the quote by commas.For example,

She cried, "Don't leave", sadness clearly visible in her eyes.

Now in your given example, it depends if the writer wanted to use these sentences as two separate ones (like he did) or as one combined sentence (like you made it to be). In his case, the sentence is correct too, as he wanted the "And with that, she stuffed in another big mouthful as she giggled happily." to be a separate sentence.
The exclamation mark in the quote before successfully ended that sentence.
Although your approach is far better, and it is not a good practice to start a sentence with conjunctions (like And), but it is not grammatically wrong either.

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