FYI I got rid of this line, now I just don't add the quotes in the first place, unless the caller requests it. Performance didn't actually change, but it looks smarter. Thanks again for the review though.
and it compiles down to a Substring call, and ranges are part of C# 8, so they exist since .NET Core 3.1. But even if the syntax is newer (e.g. collection expressions in C# 12) you can often also use features on older target frameworks if they don't require additional runtime support (and even that can often be retrofitted internally).