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Is anyone aware of an authoritative rule on how to use quotation marks for a statement that has been repeated in its entirety from one speaker, to a second, to a third, to a fourth, to a . . . . . .?

I understand basic nesting rules, but my (law) firm follows a convention that results in the following punctuation if a statement has been "passed down" through a series of speakers: "'"'"What goes up must come down."'"'"

This seems insane to me, but I can't find a "rule" that says to stop nesting entire quotes at a certain level.

I'm certainly interested in the group consensus, but even more interested in something authoritative.

tchrist
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John
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1 Answers1

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The standard is simply to alternate between double and single (or single and double, depending on your geographic locale) and I don't see any reason to change if it's a quadruply (or more) nested quote, but absolutely use curly quotes, otherwise if you have any other quotes laying around, it'll be impossible to tell where you're starting and ending.

That said, it's not uncommon to see a space between marks to help quickly count the depth of quotation especially in fonts where the spacing between individual marks is identical when in sequence. So in yours, I'd go with the following (and preferably using small spaces if possible1):

“ ‘ “ ‘ “What goes up must come down.” ’ ” ’ ” (full space)
“ ‘ “ ‘ “What goes up must come down.” ’ ” ’ ” (slightly smaller)
“ ‘ “ ‘ “What goes up must come down.” ’ ” ’ ” (even slightly smaller)
“‘“‘“What goes up must come down.”’”’” (no space)

1. I'm kind of cheating on these spaces by using <sup> </sup> for the middle one, and a doubled superscript space <sup><sup> </sup></sup> for the second one. You should actually use U+2009 or U+200A if your font supports it, otherwise, if your running text is, say, 12pt, use a 6-8pt regular (U+0020) space in between.

Community
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user0721090601
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