Hello,
Jesper in my story is tell his dad what happened to make him sad. He had to repeat what Kaelas said. He was talking and and then he said something like this: Kaelas said… Well I guess my question is, would I put Kaelas’ words in quotation marks, Italics, or nothing at all? Just wondering.
Thanks for your help
Hey Laura. What you’re describing requires single quotation marks for a quote within a quote.
Like this:
Steve looked at his dad, “Mom told me, ‘You have to do the dishes, but then you can play video games,’ so that’s what I did.”
Steve is saying the whole line, so everything he said is in regular (double) quotation marks “line”. But he’s also directly quoting his mom, so what she said is goes inside of single quotation marks ‘line’.
At every level of nesting, you switch. So if there was another quote inside of what Steve was quoting his mom as saying (a quote within a quote within a quote!) then it would be within double quotation marks.
Steve looked at his dad, “Mom told me, ‘Dad said, “You’re not allowed to have any candy.”‘”
Just do your best with it! When you publish, this is something that a professional copy editor will help you get just right before the book goes to print.
