TGIF, and gran's her usual brain-dead self.  could you find me a rule
for proper placement of quotes when there's a quote within a quote and
the inside one falls at the end of a sentence.  thanks muchly!

granny needs your help and a highball,
GB

Hello GB, and thank you for your question!
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Question: How do you punctuate a quote within a quote within a quote?
For example:
Bob said, "Sue said, 'My favorite poem is "The Raven".'" 
Is the above punctuation correct, or is there some other way? 
Answer: The rules generate a mess even worse than the one you supply.
All quotation marks fall outside terminal punctuation. Thus:
Bob said, "Sue said, 'My favorite poem is "The Raven."'"
http://www2.ncsu.edu/ncsu/grammar/Quotes3.html
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3) if there is a quote within a quote (or within dialogue) and a
question mark or exclamation mark ends the entire thing, then if the
punctuation mark belongs to the inside quote, it goes inside the end
quotation marks, but if the punctuation mark belongs to the speaker's
statement/question, the punctuation mark goes outside the end
quotation marks (boy, that sounds confusing – tell you what, I'll give
you an example for this one at the end of this list);
[..]
Now, for that example I promised you, a quote within a quote.
John asked, "Did Patton say 'there is nothing noble about dying for
your country'"? The question mark goes outside the quotes because John
was asking the question. "So that's what Hamlet meant," exclaimed
Maria, "when he said, 'To be or not to be?'" In this second example,
the question mark goes with Hamlet's question, so the question mark
goes inside the quotes – Maria is actually making a statement. If
Maria had been asking a question, however, the question mark would
have gone outside the closing quote mark. "What did Hamlet mean,"
asked Maria, "when he said, 'To be or not to be'"?
http://www.bewrite.net/community/tips/atg_punctauation_quote.htm
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regards,
Jackburton
  
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Search strategy:
"quotation marks" "quote within a quote"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=+%22quotation+marks%22+%22quote+within+a+quote%22

just what I needed, Jack.  thanks a million!  ...a grammarian's party joke...hehe.