Agreeing with the_rck, and others. I just find it easier to understand with a bit more context. The rule is the same whether dealing with dialogue or other quotations, so a small expansion/explanation from one of my favourite how-to books, the Chicago Manual of Style (13th ed):
When a quotation is used as a syntactical part of a sentence, it begins with a lowercase letter, even though the original is a complete sentence beginning with a capital.
Benjamin Franklin admonishes us to "plough deep while sluggards sleep."
But when the quotation is not syntactically dependent on the rest of the sentence, the initial letter is capitalized. ...
As Franklin advised: "Plough deep while sluggards sleep."
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Date: 21 Sep 2014 05:08 pm (UTC)