Q. Would you use a comma after the verb read in fiction when written text is introduced by that word? Does it matter whether the text is presented as a sentence? For example,
The sign read Keep Out.
versus
The sign read, “Thank you for not smoking.”
As a copyeditor I am always unsure whether read is considered a variation of such terms as said, replied, asked, wrote, or the like. Perhaps I must consider whether the grammar and syntax of the quoted material is separate from the text that introduces it?
A. You don’t normally need a comma before words introduced by the verb read—or said, for that matter—used in the sense of “consisted of (or included) the word(s).” And though quotation marks are helpful in some cases, they can usually be omitted in favor of title case for shorter signs (see CMOS 7.64):
The sign read “Thank you for not smoking.”
or
The sign read Thank You for Not Smoking.
Use a comma only in the rare event that read is used as a speech tag (in which case the quoted words would be considered to be syntactically independent relative to the surrounding sentence; see CMOS 12.14):
I asked, “Could you tell me what that sign says?”
Squinting through the haze, she read, “ ‘Thank you for not smoking.’ ”
Note the nested single quotation marks, which clarify that the quoted speaker is quoting something in turn (see also CMOS 12.46 and 6.11).