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What rules are there for when you have three sets of quotation marks?

“I saw that Julia was really annoyed when Mike answered, “‘Blade Runner,’”” John said.

(‘Blade Runner’ in singles. Mike answered in doubles. John said in doubles.)

“I saw that Julia was really annoyed when Mike answered, ‘“Blade Runner,”’” John said.

(Mike answered in singles. “Blade Runner” in doubles. John said in doubles.)

Rewriting might help a little.

“When Mike answered, “‘Blade Runner,’” Julia looked really angry,” John said.

(Mike answered in doubles. ‘Blade Runner’ in singles. John said in doubles.)

Basically, I’m wondering whether you alternate, or start small and get bigger until you can’t get any bigger.

The conventions may vary according to British or American usage, so please state which one you are refering to.

twhb
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RoDaSm
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    Just put it in italics. Or don't do anything to it. You already have it capitalized to make it identifiable as a title. No need to identify it further still. – RegDwigнt May 13 '14 at 14:17
  • I'm not au fait with various types of auto-formatting, but "' " looks better than '''''. – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '14 at 14:24
  • You should be able to avoid triple-nested quotations in most cases. In this case, as @RegDwigнt suggests, the quotes indicating that Blade Runner is a title are not necessary. Any time the quotes are nested three deep, rephrasing is a preferable solution (if possible), as the sentence is likely to be very confusing as it stands. – frances May 13 '14 at 14:24
  • Obviously, "Blade Runner" is only incidentally a title, and so that fact is irrelevant to the question at hand: What style to follow in the case of three level nested quotes? – Kris May 13 '14 at 15:06
  • Why in the world was this question marked as a duplicate of the other when it's not asking the same thing? This is specific to three sets of quotation marks, not just embedded quotation marks in general. – Jason Bassford Jan 29 '19 at 23:10
  • https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/170183/rules-for-three-sets-of-quotation-marks will help you, but a quote from that answer will help us: "The conventions may vary according to British or American usage, so please state which one you are referring to." – Greybeard May 02 '20 at 15:49

3 Answers3

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The "rule" is to alternate quote marks. You can start with doubles or singles on the outside, following whatever style guide you prefer, but then alternate. I prefer to start with double-quotes, which means that the next set is single and then double after that, and so on.

John exclaimed, “I was really annoyed when Julia said ‘Leave now if you want to see “Blade Runner”.’!”

However, as Reg has commented, titles should be set in italics. It's very unusual to need three sets of quotes.

John exclaimed, “I was really annoyed when Julia said ‘Leave now if you want to see Blade Runner.’!”

Some Bible passages do need several levels of quotes, for example a passage such as

The Lord said, “Go to my people and tell them, ‘The Lord says, “You are a fallen people...”’”

Andrew Leach
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  • Oooh! Double end-punctuation too! There's a prescriptivist bullet with your name on it somewhere (probably misspelt). – Edwin Ashworth May 13 '14 at 14:27
  • I agree with your answer, but in that last case, couldn't you write it as The Lord said, "Go to my people and tell them the Lord says, 'You are a fallen people...'"? The Lord could be saying to tell his people that he said this. – frances May 13 '14 at 14:28
  • @frances You could do, but some translations are more literal than others. – Andrew Leach May 13 '14 at 14:29
  • I wonder whether the source they are translating from actually is that specific. The difference between telling someone to say the Lord says '' vs telling them to say "The Lord says, ''" is extremely thin. I wonder how many ancient languages are even capable of reflecting the distinction. – frances May 13 '14 at 14:33
  • @frances Can't say. But I can say that the more literal translations like the NIV do use this convention. – Andrew Leach May 13 '14 at 14:38
  • I found this example which provides another alternate quoting option. Exodus 21-23 includes four-level quoting, where one level uses a colon (...the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son...). So it's first double-quotes, then single, then colon, and finally double again. The colon seems like a good tool to remember. The Lord tells Moses what to tell Pharaoh that He said. What He says He said includes reporting on what He had previously told Pharaoh. Complex construction. – frances May 13 '14 at 14:51
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I would consult a style-guide.

Since I expect most authors would try very hard not to write with three nested sets of quotations, it may be that style guides don't cover this. I would try to rearrange the section to avoid the issue. Failing that, I would use italics for one level of quotation. You could innovate and borrow guillemets?

RedGrittyBrick
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  • It's worth noting that different style guides have subtly different advice. One I had to use for one class said to go to using East-european style quotes on the outside «»‹›, then block quotes. So «John said, ‹Tim Said, "Fred said, 'John Needs to Go Away.'"›» I forget the style book, but not the pattern, and use it in informal circumstances, but fundamentally, it's better to do as RGB suggests and avoid the issue. – aramis Feb 06 '18 at 23:53
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I personally use “‘«‹›»’”, it avoids a lot of confusion.

Thomas Patterson
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