Quick help on punctuating a quote

No. But I've talked out of my colon before.

 

Is this a rule I haven't heard before? Not being flippant. I'd really like to know. Nobody ever mentioned this to me before, but maybe you had a prof or an editor back in the day make a compelling case for this rule.

 

Might be something somebody taught him. I never heard it, and have no problem with any punctuation that's appropriate inside a quote, including a semicolon.

It's an interesting discussion, but I don't buy that "people don't talk in semicolons." If there's a pause in there that demands something longer than a comma, a semicolon is fine, although so is an m-dash.

Then again, I've been a lone ranger on my use of the semicolon, particularly when I can use it to replace the incredibly weak "as" in a sentence.

 

Fixed.

 

QUOTES WITHIN QUOTES: Alternate between double quotation marks ("or") and single marks ('or'):
She said, "I quote from his letter, 'I agree with Kipling that "the female of the species is more deadly than the male," but the phenomenon is not an unchangeable law of nature,' a remark he did not explain."
Use three marks together if two quoted elements end at the same time: She said, "He told me, 'I love you.'"