Punctuation Practice: Quoting a Quote

As many of you discovered while writing Essay 1, incorporating quotations into your own draft can be both thrilling and daunting.  By now you've all got a grasp on the basics of quotation mechanics--where the quote marks go, where the periods and commas go, where the in-text citations go.

Now I'd like to practice with one more layer of complexity: using sources that are quoting other sources, themselves.  In other words, how do you quote a quote?

To answer that question, I'll refer you to this elegant website, http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_quoting.html#punctuate. Links to an external site.   Scroll down to the passage labeled "Quotation within a Quotation." 

Single quote marks are important to show quotes in the original text.  If you use double-quote marks, then it's confusing to your reader where the borrowed language begins and ends.  Single quotes add clarity, though they take practice to get used to.

In this assignment, we'll get some of that practice. 

1. Go back to your Essay 1 submission and review your quotes used.  Do any of them contain quotation marks in the original text?  If so, skip to step 3.
2. If you don't have any quotes that contain quoted material in the original version, go back to the sources you used and find a relevant passage that could be useful to your essay, that contains quoted material.
3. For this assignment, cut and paste 1 paragraph from your paper that contains a quote within a quote (either in the original version or that you've modified for this assignment).  Punctuate both quotation elements correctly, using single and double quotation marks as appropriate.

Factors to consider:

• Submit the ENTIRE PARAGRAPH from your essay that contains the quote passage, not just the quote or sentence itself.
• Use at least one set of single quote marks and at least one set of double quote marks in that paragraph.