How to quote a quote within a quote within a quote: a scalable solution

"My best friend said, 'Like, yeah, and so he said, "Quote marks are dumb," like, so he went on and said, "my professor said that, 'John Barth was a bane on editors everywhere.' he said." she said,' my best friend said."

Got it? It's basically alternating " and ' (double and single) quotes. Go ahead and read some of John Barth's stuff, which uses this all the time, for some examples.

Now if only our schools would move away from their Spanish fixation, we could start doing things the German way.

In German, they don't use the foolish methods of quotation that we Americans have arrived at. They start out with a single quote (') and move upwards in number as they move outwards in quote order. Let's say I quote a quote: Jim Bob said, 'Did you hear that Billy Joe said, "Hey, how are you?" to Tammy Sue yesterday?' See? Nice and simple-like.

And this method goes on as long as it needs to. Let's say we need a quote within a quote within a quote within a...ah hell, let's just say that it's possible to end a line with something like "" '" " ' if needbe. Just like tables...but I know you'd never try something like that with tables... Anyway, it certainly is a lot easier than remembering if you're closing a quote from two times ago, or opening a new one, or whatever. Hell, I get confused just thinking about it...