A quote within dialogue?

[JeanneT]

I should know this but it just doesn't look right however I do it.

A friend (deliberately) misquotes a couple of words of a poem and my MC corrects him with a few lines of the poem.

Specifically, she says this:

"No. It is The tune is catching and will not stop; Dance til the stars come down from the rafters..."

I tried single quotes within double quotes, tried italics within quotes and tried just making it part of the sentence. None of them seem to quite work. Keep the original caps? Make it all lower case?

I dunno.

[lexcade]

It should be single quoted within the dialogue.

"No. It is, 'The tune is catching and will not stop; dance til the stars come down from the rafters...'" If those are song lyrics, then the semi-colon should be a slash: 'The tune is catching and will not stop / Dance til the stars come down from the rafters...'

*grammar Nazi...*

[Beckahrah]

  Totally.

And I'm also a fellow grammar Nazi.

[rkollman]

I so agree! (There should be a smiley for that!) But I hate that Nazi term. Just call me Mrs. Eggert. You know, your 8th grade Language Arts teacher. The one who made you stand with with your nose in a circle drawn on the blackboard if you split an infinitive and wouldn't let you take your lunch break and you had to just stand there and stand there and stand there while she....

Okay, maybe that's a better term after all. 

[Beckahrah]

lol

[lexcade]

But I hate that Nazi word. Just call me Mrs. Eggert. You know, your 8th grade Language Arts teacher. The one who made you stand with with your nose in a circle drawn on the blackboard if you split an infinitive and wouldn't let you take your lunch break and you had to just stand there and stand there and stand there while she....

Okay, maybe that's a better term after all. 

LOL. i never had a Mrs. Eggert. but i had a Mrs. Ball, who wanted to ensure that none of the kids she taught would ever be considered a "dumb hillbilly." (i'm from appalachia.) she was...harsh...but wonderful nonetheless.

[rkollman]

Oh, I fear (is my queried agents' rejection terminology rubbing off on me?) the Mrs. Balls and Mrs. Eggerts are creatures of the past. I despair. I don't think the teachers know; you can't blame the students. It makes me more sympathetic toward those non-responding agents. What they must see. Every day. Shudder.     

[lexcade]

as part of my English major, I had to take a grammar class. some of the students couldn't identify the verbs in sentences. THE VERBS!!!!!!!!! 

some days, i had to resist beating my head against my desk.

[rkollman]

Tell 'em to diagram a sentence, they wanna know what birth control has to do with it. 

[MaryL]

That is a tough one. Lexcade got this right, JeanneT, to the best of my knowledge.  The single quotation marks within double are how I've seen it done. Keep in mind, when you sell this one, Jeanne, the copyeditor will put it in keeping with the vogue on that particular day at that particular minute, because it might change between now and then. All those rules I learned from grade school to college changed and have now changed back.  Take for example, commas in a sequence.   

[MaryL]

as part of my English major, I had to take a grammar class. some of the students couldn't identify the verbs in sentences. THE VERBS!!!!!!!!! 

some days, i had to resist beating my head against my desk.

You'll love this one.  I taught grammar to teachers so that they could teach parts of speech correctly.  At least your folks who couldn't identify verbs were not in the business of teaching people how to identify them. 

Caveat:  I taught for years and this is in no way a slam to teachers but to the lack of emphasis on written (and even spoken) language in the United States. 

[lexcade]

if i had a desk, my head would be meeting it right now.

i guess part of my problem is that grammar comes easily for me, much like calculus or biology come easily to certain people but not to me.

the written word is losing a lot of focus. every day i go to stores or read articles that use incorrect grammar and it makes me insane.

[JeanneG]

Hey, I'm teaching grammar to college freshman. Parts of speech?? What's that?? 

A friend told me that teaching college freshman comp is like pouring a lot of information through a small funnel. Yep. Would have to agree.

I had a Mrs. Dahlgren who made us diagram sentences--absolutely the BEST way to learn how a sentence works.

And MaryL, I hate, hate, hate the disappearance of the serial comma. It makes for so much confusion when it comes to lists.

Oh, Lexcade gave you the right advice.

JeanneG
(a fellow member of the grammar police)

[Beckahrah]

I despise English classes.  How can people have progressed through their entire education and still not know how to use a comma or capitalize? NO.  That's a BAD comma!

[lexcade]

ugh. i know. i miss the serial comma, i do NOT accept deers or fishes as plurals, and hisself is NOT a word. ugh. people butcher the English language more every day.