Quotations within quotations

Let’s start with an easy one. Quotation marks. Okay, actually quotation marks are not that easy. I just read an article to remind myself of exactly what the deal is and there are so. many. rules. But let’s focus on just one: what to do when you need to use quotation marks within quotation marks. An unholy Matryoshka of quotation marks, if you will.

The US and the UK (the two main flavours of English) deal with quotation marks completely differently. The US uses single (‘ ‘) quotation marks on the outside of a quote and doubles (“ “) to indicate a quote within a quote. For unfathomable reasons, the UK does the opposite.

Americans would write a double-quote situation like this:
‘He said his favorite book is “Harry Potter and that Loud Goat Who Won’t Shut Up Already” and I fell off my chair,’ said your American friend who will not be going on a second date.

And Brits (and Aussies) would write it like this:
“Is this the same guy who calls dinner ‘tummy time’? Not okay,” said your British friend who was right about that.

👇 Of course, you can just ignore the rules and put quotations around whatever the hell you please, like the proprietor did at this hostel in Hobart.

TL; DR? A quote within a quote shouldn't use the same kind of apostrophes as the container quote.