How to Cite a Quote Within a Quote in APA, MLA, and Chicago

In practice, the double marks in your source become single marks in your sentence. The MLA Style Center and Chicago's Q&A both state this, and the University of Manitoba Libraries' APA guide gives it for APA.

• Source text (Ortiz, page 41): By March, one student called the new schedule “a fresh start.”
• Your sentence (MLA): Ortiz reports that “one student called the new schedule ‘a fresh start’” (41).

APA's quotation guidance puts periods and commas inside closing single or double marks. Other punctuation goes inside only when it belongs to the quoted words. When a parenthetical citation ends the sentence, the period follows the citation. The MLA Style Center and CMOS Shop Talk, the Chicago Manual of Style's blog, also put periods and commas before the closing mark.

APA sets a quotation of 40 words or more as an indented block. MLA does so when a quotation runs to more than four lines, according to Douglas College Library's MLA guide. Neither style puts marks around the block. A quotation inside the block therefore keeps its double marks, as the Manitoba and Douglas College guides both state. Another Chicago Q&A lists the same adjustment: in a block quotation, single marks inside the passage become double. In APA and MLA, the citation follows the block's final punctuation. The second row of the table shows both points, with a sentence too short for a real block.

In an MLA Style Center example, a passage by Goodstein quotes Kuhn. Only Goodstein's book goes in the works-cited list, though you may name Kuhn in your sentence. The Manitoba guide follows the same logic for APA. The reference list holds the work you quote, not the works it cites. The examples below use a fictitious source.

Source text, Dana Whitfield, Field Notes from the Archive (2021), page 88: Ruth Calder, the head archivist, was blunt about priorities: “We save what people ask for, not what matters.”

• APA: Whitfield (2021) wrote that the head archivist, Ruth Calder, “was blunt about priorities: ‘We save what people ask for, not what matters’” (p. 88).
• MLA: Whitfield writes that the head archivist, Ruth Calder, “was blunt about priorities: ‘We save what people ask for, not what matters’” (88).
• Chicago (notes): Whitfield writes that the head archivist, Ruth Calder, “was blunt about priorities: ‘We save what people ask for, not what matters.’”¹ Note: 1. Dana Whitfield, Field Notes from the Archive (Riverside University Press, 2021), 88.

When the passage contains its own citation

The MLA Style Center says you need not reproduce your source's parenthetical citations. For APA, the Manitoba guide says to keep a citation that sits inside the quoted words. When citations close the passage, it recommends ending your quotation before them.

The examples above quote Whitfield's own sentence. If you use only Calder's words as your evidence, you are citing a secondary source. For APA, the Manitoba guide advises citing the original if you can get it. If you cannot, cite the work that quoted it. Our guide to citing a secondary source shows the formats for each style.

The MHRA Style Guide puts short quotations in single marks and a quotation within a quotation in double marks. It places the final full stop outside the closing mark unless the quotation is a complete sentence set off by punctuation. The second Chicago Q&A treats single or double marks as a choice to match to the surrounding text. It changes a British title's single marks to double for a book published in the US. Follow the style your assignment names.

A quotation that is correctly marked and cited can still show up as a match in a similarity report. That is expected, because a quotation repeats its source word for word. The Certentis plagiarism checker lists the sources it found and each one's share of your text. It highlights the matching passages and, where available, shows the source text for each match. Use it to confirm that every matching passage sits inside quotation marks or a block and carries a citation. Our guide to understanding similarity reports explains the rest of the report.

If a nested quotation gets hard to read, paraphrase the passage and cite the paraphrase.