Dear KL:

You wrote:
> I know that quotation marks for a quote within a quote are to be single
> (in the USA). But what if you quote printed material that includes a
> quotation?
>
> A student asked me recently about taking a quote from a text in which
> there was already a quote. In the original text, the quote was printed
> with double quotation marks. In placing this as a quote into her own
> paper, should she change the quote within her quote to single marks? She
> objected as she did not want to change anything within the original quote
> without indicating the change.
>
Yes, you would have to change the quotations marks from single to double as you describe. Technically, since they are still quotation marks, she is not tampering with the quotation, simply making her own work more precise.

Having said that, occasionally some employers or some policies will insist on doing it differently. I once did some proofreading for a writer who had some customers who were strict Christian fundamentalists. He said that some
of his readers would claim he was tampering with Holy Scriptures when he changed the punctuation or capitalization in a quotation form the Bible to make it easier to read in context. Perhaps if she were writing for an audience with strong feelings like that, it might be prudent to keep the original quotation marks and put the larger quotation in single quotation marks surrounded by another set of double quotation marks. Keep in mind that in formal research any quotations four or more lines long usually are indented and the introductory and final quotation marks are eliminated. So any such quotation of four or more lines would have the original punctuation anyhow.

As you noted, in the British Isles, the doubling and singling is reversed.