I've recently found myself second guessing a convention I've followed for a while where with a piece of dialogue, for instance:
"Hurry home" came down the front stairs behind her.
I'm unsure if it is proper to place a comma before the terminating comma as one would with a real said-bookism, which I've had no luck finding out if verbs like "came," the "to be"s, and others no traditionally used to convey spoken dialogue are considered. Commas are supposed to always offset direct dialogue, yes, but the examples of this (e.g., here) only pertain to said-bookisms.
Should they be handled like dialogue tags or like one might an incomplete direct quotation in non-fiction without any commas? I've been searching for months, and perhaps my various rewordings are failing to pinpoint my actual concern, but I can't find anything conclusive.
