"Quote" within a quote MLA
So I have a quote that has double quotation marks inside it. Would I leave those in? Or replace them with single quotes?
In Carolyn Gregoire’s article “What Your 'Life Story' Really Says About You”, she points out that “studies have found that "realistic optimists" . . . may be happier and more successful that strict optimists or pessimists.”
In this case, the phrase "realistic optimists" is in the source within quotes, and the rest of that is just a quote of the source. Note that the "realistic optimists" part is still the same person talking, per se, with quotes around it because it's strange language (I presume).
If there's something MLA has to say about this, I'd be happy to know. Otherwise, just best practice?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/26638. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Why would MLA violate standard typesetting rules? In American English, quoted material nested inside double quotes uses single quotes. (In British English it's the reverse: single quotes on the outside, double on the inside.)
In Carolyn Gregoire’s article “What Your 'Life Story' Really Says About You,” she points out that “studies have found that 'realistic optimists'...may be happier and more successful that strict optimists or pessimists.”
In both cases (please note the nested single quotes in the article name), the single quotes are understood to be material which was in double quotes in the original.
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