I'm trying to write something and one of the characters is recounting this long story that happened a long time ago. I'm getting confused about how to punctuate it. (I'd just do a flash back and write it in present without it being recounted but I like to interject little comments from the character recounting the story).

I'm currently writing it where everything in the text is quoted, because it's what the character is recounting and dialogue he speaks is in single quotes inside that, but it looks weird.

To make it worse, for some reason I'm wording the recounting in the third person, so Mr. Johnson is recounting the story that has him talking with someone else and recounting the what both people said.

Has anyone dealt with this situation? How'd you handle it? Thank you.

Do it as a flash back with the comments in parenthesis or italics?

Usually the way to do it is something like this:

Clark said "Everything was going pretty well until Jimmy said 'Did anyone remember to let Lois out of the death trap?' After that the party went pretty flat."

I've used double quotes for the things Clark says and single quotes for when he's quoting someone else, I've seen it done the other way round. No problem either way so long as it's consistent.

I just asked a question related to this on another board. I agree with the solution that Marcus gave. However, I have been confronted with a quote within a quote within a quote. I believe the correct way to punctuatuate it would be double marks for the first quote, single marks for the second quote, and double marks again for the third quote. Does anyone differ with that? If so, what would be the correct usage?

Thanks for your help.

Jude

I agree with Marcus. I also don't think there should be any confusion with your Mr. Johnson quoting two people within his dialogue as he'll presumably identify each person at the time. i.e. "Lois said, 'Don't go in there.' and then Jimmy said, 'Why not?'". So it should be reasonably easy to follow who's saying what, I should think.

LabRat