Double or single quotation marks non-obvious citation in citation? My university’s guidelines about say that quotations in text should appear in single quotation marsks whereas when the writer quotes something in that paper and I am using it, I must use double quotation marks.

Now what confuses me is that I am quoting some bits from a paper about someone’s lectures, and the author of the paper gives a footnote saying the text is edited and annotated, but he doesn’t make clear which bits he annotates or he has edited himself, although this might sound simple it is a bit confusing.

Where should I use which quotation marks?
The rule you are referring is probably a convoluted way of saying that:


In general you should use single quotation marks.
When the text you are quoting contains quotation markes, you should turn them into double quotation marks – no matter what they were before. (This is probably unless when the quotation marks appear in a quotation in the text you are quoting, in which case things get ugly.)


So, suppose the book you want to quote is one of the following:


  Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.
  Prof. Smith said ‘Hello’ to the students.


Then your quotation you should quote it as follows:


  The book mentions: ‘Prof. Smith said “Hello” to the students.’


Or (though I would advise against using such a construction at all):


  The book quotes the Professor: ‘“Hello”’


If the text you are quoting does not clarify whether something is a quote or not, this is not your problem (except that it may render it unreliable as a source of information). However, you might want to mention in general that you are quoting from a book which states that it has edited the quotes within in it.