How do I quote a quote that is quoting someone else?

Question

Writing an essay on a book, The Madonnas of Leningrad, for my western studies class, how do I quote a quote from a book that that person is quoting someone else? The quote is, " 'They're lovely, but you should save your money. Buy yourself a lamb chop.' "

Answer 1

You've nearly done it correctly in your question. You may begin the quote with quotation marks, add an apostrophe before and after the interior quote, and then finish with another set of quotation marks. Here's an example:

"The weatherman shouted to be heard over the wind, 'This storm will cause unprecedented damage to homes and property and residents of the area should take precautionary measures to minimize risk.'"

You may find that the interior quote is either too long, or has unnecessary information in it. In that case, you may want to remove it and show that information has been removed with the use of ellipsis.

"The weatherman shouted to be heard over the wind, 'This storm will cause unprecedented damage... and residents of the area should take precautionary measures to minimize risk.'"

Additionally, you are allowed to add information to an interior quote if the context necessary to understand it appears elsewhere in the text. For example, if in the original quote, the weatherman said "It" instead of "this storm," you may present the quote like this:

"The weatherman shouted to be heard over the wind, '[The storm] will cause unprecedented damage to homes and property and residents of the area should take precautionary measures to minimize risk.'"

I've taken a look at the particular quote you are referencing. It is not followed by a dialogue tag such as "...she said," but it is preceded by "And she said,..." If I were you, I would write the quote as "And she said, 'They're lovely, but you should save your money. Buy yourself a lamb chop.'" It looks cleaner to separate one of the quotation marks from one of the apostrophes. If you have a limited word count, you don't have to do this, but it does emphasize that the line you selected is quoting dialogue.