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How would embedded quotations be used when quoting from passages/sources within an essay? What would be the difference between normal quotations and embedded quotations?

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Can you give an example of what you mean? I'm not clear about what distinction you are asking about. – Colin Fine Sep 28 '10 at 15:47
“embedded quotations” probably means quotations within quotations – nohat♦ Sep 29 '10 at 21:16

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Simply change the double quotes in the source text into single quotes to indicate that it is an inner quotation. Otherwise there is no difference.

(Note that if you are writing, say, a research paper, you might want to quote the original source of the quote as well in, say, a "works cited" page. That depends on a ton of things though)

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What happens when we have 3 layers? How do we write a quotation mark in an inner quotation mark? – Pacerier May 24 '12 at 18:14
@Pacerier: I think that's generally just a bad idea. I don't think there's any kind of a standardized means of doing that. Possible solutions would be to go back to double quotes for the second level deep inner quote, or to use single quotes for that inner quote as well. – Billy ONeal May 24 '12 at 18:18
But we can't use the same inner quotes within inner quotes otherwise that would look like it's ending that inner quote. – Pacerier May 24 '12 at 18:29
@Pacerier: Not really -- it's usually fairly obvious to the reader what's going on. It's not like this has to be read by a machine or anything like that. – Billy ONeal May 24 '12 at 19:37
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If you have inner inner quotes, you go back to double quotes. If you have more than three layers of quotes, you keep alternating. – Peter Shor Jun 10 '12 at 12:51

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