elisp beginner's parens question ??

[William Case <billlinux@rogers.com>]

Hi;

I am working my way through the tutorial.  First, complements to whoever
wrote it.
I don't know if it has been updated in the last two years, or if I have
picked up enough to understand the very basic subject matter it deals
with, but my first try two and a half years ago left me completely
baffled.  This time through at a slow and steady pace -- everything is
clear.

Secondly, I have some questions about debugging parenthesis errors.

I had the following practice function which was giving me debug errors.
It has been fixed so I am not asking for a solution.

( ... ( ... " ..." ( ... })) 
		     ^ error.

However my questions are these:

When I used check-parens, the cursor stopped on the first left paren
whether the error was later tested on the last, second last or third
last right parens. 

Why is this? I can see a situation with far more than three parens that
would take more than a few seconds to chase down the error.  Is there or
can there be check-parens that shows which grouping has the wrong parens
or needs one added?
There didn't seem to be any distinction between a double quotes error
and a parenthesis error? 

The question that flows from the above is how does the interpreter nest
parens?
Does the outside right and left parens go with, say, a basic defun
declaration, and then work its way inwards? Or, does it just count the
number of left parens and compare it with the number of right?

Do you have any mental tips or tricks you use to check the parens
balance when you get an error that you can pass on to a newbie like me?

-- 
Regards Bill