How to quote quotes inside a quote

How to Quote a Quote. Rule: Use single quotation marks inside double quotation marks when you have a quotation within a quotation. Example: Bobbi told me, “Delia said, ‘This will never work. ‘ ”

Use single quotes for a nested quotation, when someone repeats what someone else said. Joe smiled and said, “Jenny said ‘yes’ when I asked her to marry me.” If you need another layer of quotation, just keep alternating between single and double quotation marks. “Joe was just here,” said Susan.

Quoting Directly

When you quote directly from a source, enclose the quoted section in quotation marks. Add an in-text citation at the end of the quote with the author name and page number, like this: “Here’s a direct quote” (Smith 8). “Here’s a direct quote” (“Trouble” 22).

If you want to omit some words, phrases, or sentences from the quote to save space, use an ellipsis (. . .) with a space before and after it to indicate that some material has been left out. If the part you removed includes a sentence break, add a period before the ellipsis to indicate this.

Use ellipsis points to show omission within the quotation. Omit any punctuation on either side of the ellipsis, unless the punctuation is necessary to make the shortened quotation grammatically correct.

Yes, you can leave out words you deem unnecessary in a quotation, but you can‘t take out words that will change its meaning.

Three Dots for Missing Text

To show readers that part of a quotation is missing, a writer can use three dots (like this ) to replace the missing words. (These three dots are called an ellipsis.) An ellipsis is usually written or in square brackets [].

When multiple quotation marks are used for quotations within quotations, keep the quotation marks together (put periods and commas inside both; put semi-colons, colons, etc., outside both).

When the annunciatory clause falls in the middle of a sentence, use a comma and closing quotation marks before it, and a comma and opening quotation marks after it.

Using an exclamation point is usually quite simple—you just put it at the end of the sentence. Put the exclamation point inside the closing quotation marks if it applies to the words enclosed by the quotation marks.

Leave a blank line before and after the quote and indent the whole quote from the left margin. Do not add quotation marks. Introduce the quote using your own words followed by : a colon – if you have written a complete sentence – or a comma if you use a phrase such as ‘according to’ along with the authors name.

Quotations and capitalization

Capitalization of the quoted material depends on the material itself—if you‘re quoting a complete sentence, you should start the quote with a capital letter, even if the quote is placed in the middle of a sentence: The exact phrase she used was “There is no way we will get there in time.”

You can use a full sentence followed by a colon to introduce a quotation.

To form an ellipsis in MLA when the omitted material appears at the end of your sentence, type the ellipsis with three periods with space before each period and include the closing quotation marks immediately after the third period. Note that the period to end your sentence comes after the parenthetical citation.

In general, it is not necessary to use an ellipsis at the beginning or end of a quotation, even if you are quoting from the middle of a sentence. An exception is that you should include an ellipsis if, to prevent misinterpretation, you need to emphasize that the quotation begins or ends in midsentence.

Use ellipses to make a quote say something other than what the author originally intended. Include the sentence’s ending punctuation followed by the ellipsis points when the dots are inserted after a complete sentence. Leave out the spaces before and after the ellipsis points or between them.

When placing an ellipsis at the end of a quotation to indicate the omission of material, use four points — a three-point ellipsis and a period. The ellipsis should follow a blank space.

Those three little dots are called an ellipsis (plural: ellipses). The term ellipsis comes from the Greek word meaning “omission,” and that’s just what an ellipsis does—it shows that something has been left out.

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