Hi,

I have a question: If a character is reporting back a conversation that they had with someone and they quote that person within their dialogue, which is the correct way to write it?

For example, "I can't remember what he said exactly but I think it was "what are you doing?" or something like that." Or is it:

"I can't remember what he said exactly but I think it was 'what are you doing?' or something like that."

Thanks

Whichever you use for speech in the normal way, you do the other for speech inside.

Generally speaking, UK novels use ' and ' for dialogue, with "" inside. UK mags and US novels use " " and '' inside. Can't remember what US mags do, sorry.

<Added>

not just novels, sorry. Books...

Thanks, that is helpful and it will save me a lot of changes

You're welcome, Mongoose. (Love the user-name, BTW!)

It was a random word that popped into my head 12 years ago when the person setting up my first email account asked me to think of a user name.

I recently read a sentence in an old book and it said "she had the mongoose instinct for truth and finding things out." Quite apt for me as I always want to understand everything!

I always wonder what the story is behind people's user names. There's nothing really interesting about mine. We had a thread about it once though, didn't we?