Quotation Within a Title
How to punctuate a title that itself contains a quoted phrase or another title.
Titles frequently embed other titles or quoted phrases, and the rule is one of alternation. In an italicised book title, an embedded article or short-work title takes quotation marks: Reading "The Waste Land" in Wartime. In a quoted article title, an embedded work title is italicised: "Irony in Bleak House".
When an article title already sits inside double quotation marks and contains a quoted phrase, that inner phrase drops to single marks in American style: "On Being Told to 'Just Write'". British style inverts the pairing throughout.
An embedded book title inside an italic book title is set in roman in Chicago style — reverse italics — rather than italicised twice, since italic within italic is invisible to the reader.
Common mistake: leaving the inner quotation in doubles inside an already double-quoted title. The nesting becomes unreadable and breaks most citation parsers.
“Smith, Jane. "Teaching 'The Road Not Taken' Without the Myth." College English, 2019.”
Keep reading the glossary
How to punctuate a short work's title, including what happens when it meets other punctuation.
Italics for whole, self-contained works; quotation marks for parts contained within them.
A quotation inside another quotation, distinguished by alternating single and double marks.
A national style difference — double in American English, single in much of British English.