Quote Within a Quote MLA: How to Punctuate and Cite One

A quote within a quote in MLA takes single quotation marks inside the double ones. If the passage you are quoting already contains quoted material, keep that inner material in single marks: the narrator recalls that “my father’s advice was always the same — ‘wait until you know the whole story'” (Whitfield 12). The double marks belong to you; the single marks belong to your source.

That is the punctuation rule. The citation rule is separate and depends on which author you are actually crediting, which is where most of the confusion comes from.

How to cite a quote within a quote in MLA

Two situations, two different citations.

Situation one: you have the source in front of you. You are reading a novel, and the passage you want happens to contain dialogue in quotation marks. Cite the novelist. The inner quotation is part of that page, not a separate source. Single marks inside double marks, one citation, done.

Situation two: your source is quoting someone else’s work. You are reading Kirkey, and Kirkey quotes Smith. You want Smith’s words but you have never seen Smith’s original. This is an indirect source, and MLA handles it with qtd. in — short for “quoted in.”

Name the original author in your sentence, and put the source you actually read in the parenthetical:

Smith argues that “even if euthanasia was legal, 42% of doctors would be against this method of assisted dying” (qtd. in Kirkey 10).

The page number is Kirkey’s page — the page where you found it. Your Works Cited entry lists Kirkey, not Smith, because Kirkey is the source you consulted.

When to use qtd. in and when to avoid it

MLA’s position is that you should track down the original whenever you can. qtd. in is a fallback, not a convenience.

Use it when the original is genuinely out of reach — an unpublished letter, an interview conducted by your source, a rare or untranslated work, an out-of-print book your library does not hold.

Do not use it because the original was a few clicks away and you did not check. Quotations degrade as they get passed along; words drop, tenses shift, and context disappears. If you cite a paraphrase of a paraphrase, you inherit every error in the chain and take responsibility for it.

A practical test: if you can find the original in ten minutes, find it and cite it directly.

Single and double quotation marks, sorted out

American MLA convention is double marks on the outside, single on the inside, alternating if it somehow goes deeper.

Standard nesting. The critic notes that “the phrase ‘a room of one’s own’ has outlived the essay it came from” (Carr 42).

Dialogue inside prose. The narrator recalls that “she said ‘I’ll be back before dark’ and then wasn’t” (Whitfield 118).

A title inside a quotation. Article and poem titles take quotation marks, so they become single marks when nested: the introduction claims that “‘The Waste Land’ broke the poem open” (Doyle 7).

Punctuation placement. Periods and commas go inside the closing quotation marks in American usage — including inside a single mark when it ends the quotation. Colons and semicolons go outside. Question marks and exclamation points go inside only if they belong to the quoted material.

The general mechanics of introducing and closing a quotation are in how to write a quote.

Block quotes with a quote inside them

The rule inverts. A block quotation — more than four lines of prose, or more than three lines of verse — carries no outer quotation marks, because the indentation does that job. So any quotation marks that were inside the original stay as they were: double marks.

Set the block off half an inch from the left margin, keep it double-spaced, and place the parenthetical citation after the closing punctuation rather than before it. That last detail is the reverse of an inline quotation and is the most commonly missed part of block formatting. See how to block quote and block quote MLA.

Works Cited entries for indirect sources

Only the source you read gets an entry. If you cited Smith as (qtd. in Kirkey 10), your Works Cited lists Kirkey:

• Kirkey, Sharon. “Doctors Divided on Assisted Death.” National Post, 12 Mar. 2016, p. 10.

Listing Smith would tell your reader you consulted Smith’s original, which you did not. If you do go find Smith, then Smith gets the entry, the citation drops qtd. in, and Kirkey disappears from the paper entirely unless you use him for something else.

Full entry formats are in MLA quote citation.

Common mistakes

Using double marks inside double marks. The most frequent error, and it makes the sentence unreadable — the reader cannot tell where your quotation ends.

Citing the original author’s page number. With qtd. in, the page belongs to the source you read. You have no way of knowing the original’s pagination.

Putting qtd. in the wrong slot. It goes before the source you read, not before the original author: (qtd. in Kirkey 10), never (Smith, qtd. in 10).

Using qtd. in for a quotation that is simply part of your source’s own prose. If Ellison’s novel contains dialogue, that dialogue is Ellison. No indirect citation is involved.

Adding quotation marks to a block quote. The indentation replaces them.

Silently altering the inner quotation. Any change you make inside a quotation goes in square brackets, and an omission takes an ellipsis. That applies to the nested material as much as the outer. See how to edit a quote.

FAQ

How do you punctuate a quote within a quote in MLA? Double quotation marks around the material you are quoting, single quotation marks around any quotation that was already inside it.

What does qtd. in mean? “Quoted in.” It marks an indirect source — you are quoting words your source quoted from someone else, and you have not seen the original.

Which page number goes in a qtd. in citation? The page of the source you actually read, not the original.

Who goes in the Works Cited for an indirect source? Only the source you consulted. The original author is named in your sentence but gets no entry.

Do block quotes use quotation marks around a nested quote? Yes, and they stay double. A block quote has no outer marks, so the inner ones are not nested and do not change.

Is it ever fine to cite an indirect source? Yes, when the original is genuinely unavailable — unpublished material, an interview your source conducted, a rare or untranslated work. Otherwise MLA expects you to find the original.