A quote within a quote within a quote

How do you handle a quote within a quote within a quote in an MLA citation?

Posted by Linda Nagy
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In the United States, you keep switching off between single and double quotes. So it would look like this:

"Sally remarked, 'Ginny, if you say "hell" again, I'll wash your mouth with soap.' "

Here, the word "hell" is in double quotes.

Other countries (like Germany, I believe) have a different approach, which is to move from single to double to triple quotes, like so:

'Sally remarked, "Ginny, if you say '''hell''' again, I'll wash your mouth with soap." '

Max_Elliott May-24-2013

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This page on "MLA Formatting Quotations" at the Purdue Online Writing School should answer all your questions:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/03/

Not in answer to your question, but as a matter of interest, in Britain we usually do it the second way Max_Eliott mentioned - single quotation marks on the outside, double quotation marks for nested quotations. But I've never seen triple quotes. We also use different punctuation, so called "logical punctuation", but that's a different story, although its use seems to be increasing in the US:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2011/05/the_rise_of_logical_punctuation.html

Warsaw Will May-25-2013

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Triple quotes are trippy

Clay Ainslie Aug-07-2015

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'He said "She was like "'He sounded like ""MRAWWWHHH.""'""'

OW MY BRAIN Aug-12-2015

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How about this dilemma: A quote within a quote within a quote:

Is A, B or C correct?

A.
The Administration reported in it's daily blogpost, "In awarding his student, Mr Moore said, 'Class, I was impressed when Kari told me that her father's dictionary states [...if you want to right a quote within a quote within a quote, you use brackets] so I awarded her a squirrel nugget.'"

B.
The Administration reported in it's daily blogpost, "In awarding his student, Mr Moore said, 'Class, I was impressed when Kari told me that her father's dictionary states '...if you want to write a quote within a quote within a quote, you use brackets' so I awarded her a candy.'"

The Administration reported in it's daily blogpost, "In awarding his student, Mr Moore said, 'Class, I was impressed when Kari told me that her father's dictionary states "...if you want to right a quote within a quote within a quote, you use brackets" so I awarded her a squirrel nugget.'"

Mark Colligan Nov-16-2016

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The quotation has a quotation within it that ends at the end of the original quote. I put the original quote in double quotation marks and the within quote in single quotation marks, however, what do I do when I get to the end and it is the end of both the within quote and the main quote?

Barbara J. Mar-25-2018

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See:
https://data.grammarbook.com/blog/quotation-marks/quoting-a-question-within-a-question/

https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/92163/how-to-punctuate-a-quote-within-a-quote

The trick at the end is to leave a space after the single quotation mark, separating it from the double.

jayles Mar-27-2018

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I am no expert on quotes (very rusty) and when I searched on using a quote within a quote within a quote and found this page, I read through it and found my answer. I also noticed the comment asking if A, B or C is correct. I noticed the word "it's" and believe the word should be "its." What do you think?

user108989 Jul-04-2020

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