Is the comma needed? “All the what?,” he said

[Kohyoongliat]

Confronted with Dáte’s question at Thursday’s White House briefing, Trump responded with a question of his own. “All the what?,” he said.

Is the comma before the closed inverted commas necessary?

Thanks.

[Torsten]

I wouldn’t use a comma in this sentence.

[Masme]

I agree with Torsten. So, your sentence should read as follows:

“All the what?” he said.

You still spell the first word of the tag with lower case, because it’s still part of the sentence.

[Anglophile]

No, the comma is not necessary.

I don’t think we usually place two punctuation marks together except, of course, the inverted commas.

[Masme]

Hi Anglophile,

I completely agree with you. Perhaps we do when we express some sort of surprise as in

“What did he say!?”

[Anglophile]

Yes, very rare though!