When quoting a quotation, how do you handle the double quotes?

Assume there is original source text:

This restaurant is amazing with "delicious lasagna" and great service. Make sure you go 6-7pm for the quietest times.

I want to quote "delicious lasagna" but not sure how to handle the outer double quotes. If I was quoting more than just that quotation (e.g. is amazing with "delicious lasagna" and great service) I'd just do:

"...is amazing with 'delicious lasagna' and great service."

However, when quoting just that quotation, it looks like:

"'delicious lasagna'"

Is this the correct way or is there something better?

Solution 1:

The following piece of the CMoS explains rather well how to use quotes within quotes and reading what the manual says I conclude that, generally speaking, your assumption is correct; so you might write:

" 'delicious lasagna' " [note blank space separating single quotation mark from double quotation marks]

However, as others said, it depends on what you are writing.

13.28 Quotations and “quotes within quotes”¹

Quoted words, phrases, and sentences run into the text are enclosed in double quotation marks. Single quotation marks enclose quotations within quotations; double marks, quotations within these; and so on. (The practice in the United Kingdom and elsewhere is often the reverse: single marks are used first, then double, and so on.) When the material quoted consists entirely of a quotation within a quotation, only one set of quotation marks need be employed (usually double quotation marks). For permissible changes from single to double quotation marks and vice versa, see 13.7 (item 1); see also 13.61. For dialogue, see 13.37. For technical uses of single quotation marks, see 7.50, 8.129.

_{“Don’t be absurd!” said Henry. “To say that ‘I mean what I say’ is the same as ‘I say what I mean’ is to be as confused as Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party. You remember what the Hatter said to her: ‘Not the same thing a bit! Why you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see”!’ ”}

Note carefully not only the placement of the single and double closing quotation marks but also that of the exclamation points in relation to those marks in the example above. Question marks and exclamation points are placed just within the set of quotation marks ending the element to which such terminal punctuation belongs. For the placement of other punctuation—commas, periods, question marks, and so on—in relation to closing quotation marks, see 6.9–11.

¹ _{Chicago Manual of Style. (http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/16/ch13/ch13_sec028.html) [You can register yourself for a thirty-day free trial here ]}