Template:Blockquote
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Category:Wikipedia template-protected templates#Blockquote
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The Manual of Style guidelines for block quotations recommend formatting block quotations using the {{Blockquote}} template or the HTML <blockquote> element, for which that template provides a wrapper.
- Quotes work best when used with short sentences, and at the start or end of a section, as a hint of or to help emphasize the section's content.
- For typical quotes, especially those longer than the rest of the paragraph in which they are quoted, {{Cquote}} (for use outside of article space only) provides a borderless quote with decorative quotation marks, and {{Quote frame}} provides a bordered quote. Both span the page width.
- For very short quotes, {{Rquote}} (with decorative quotation marks, for use outside of article space only) or {{Quote box}} (framed) can be used to set the quote off to either the right or left as in a magazine sidebar. This can be effective on essay pages and WikiProject homepages.
Usage
{{Blockquote}} adds a block quotation to an article page.
This is easier to type and is more wiki-like than the equivalent HTML <blockquote>...</blockquote> tags, and has additional pre-formatted attribution parameters for author and source (though these are not usually used in articles; ).
Note: Block quotes do not normally contain quotation marks .
 | This template is for actual quotations only. Do not use it for block indentation of other material; see {{Block indent}} for that purpose. |
Examples
Basic use:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{Blockquote
|text=Quoted material.
}} |
|
With attribution displayed:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{Blockquote
|text=Quoted material.
|author=First M. Last
}} |
— First M. Last |
With more attribution:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{Blockquote
|text=Quoted material.
|author=First M. Last
|title="Article Title"
|source=''Book Title'' (date)
}} |
— First M. Last, "Article Title", Book Title (date) |
Examples with "multiline":
Especially useful for translated quotes; see notes about this parameter.
- with "multiline"
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{blockquote|text=
{{lang|fr|Ceci n'est pas une pipe.}}
This is Not a Pipe.
|multiline=yes
|author=[[René Magritte]]
|title=''[[The Treachery of Images]]''
}} |
|
- for comparison without "multiline"
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
{{blockquote|text=
{{lang|fr|Ceci n'est pas une pipe.}}
This is Not a Pipe.
|author=[[René Magritte]]
|title=''[[The Treachery of Images]]''
}} |
|
An ample example:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">{{Blockquote|text=Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.|character=Mark Antony|author=[[William Shakespeare]]|title=''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]''|source=act III, scene I}}</syntaxhighlight> |
— Mark Antony, in William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act III, scene I |
Parameters
Parameter list
{{Blockquote
| text =
| author =
| title =
| source =
| character =
| multiline =
| class =
| style =
}}
See also section #TemplateData.
Quoted text
|text= a.k.a. |1=—The material being quoted, without quotation marks around it. It is always safest to name this parameter (rather than use an unnamed positional parameter), because, otherwise, any inclusion of a non-escaped "=" character (e.g., in a URL in a source citation) will break the template.
Displayed attribution
These parameters are for displaying attribution information below the quote; this should not be confused with citing a source . These parameters are entirely optional, and are usually used with famous quotations, not routine block quotations, which are usually sourced at the end of the introductory line immediately before the quotation, with a normal <ref>...</ref> tag.
|author= a.k.a. |2= – optional author/speaker attribution information that will appear below the quotation, and preceded with an attribution dash.
|title= a.k.a. |3= – optional title of the work the quote appears in, to display below the quotation. This parameter immediately follows the output of |author= (and an auto-generated comma), if one is provided. It does not auto-italicize. Major works (books, plays, albums, feature films, etc.) should be italicized; minor works (articles, chapters, poems, songs, TV episodes, etc.) go in quotation marks . Additional citation information can be provided in a fourth parameter, |source=, below, which will appear after the title.
|source= a.k.a. |4= – optionally used for additional source information to display, after |title=, like so: |title="The Aerodynamics of Shaved Weasels" |source=''Perspectives on Mammal Barbering'', 2016; a comma will be auto-generated between the two parameters. If |source= is used without |title=, it simply acts as |title=. (This parameter was added primarily to ease conversion from misuse of the pull quote template {{Quote frame}} for block quotation, but it may aid in cleaner meta-data implementation later.)
|character= a.k.a. |char= or |5= – to attribute fictional speech to a fictional character, with other citation information. Can also be used to attribute real speech to a specific speaker among many, e.g. in a roundtable/panel transcript, a band interview, etc. This parameter outputs "[Character's name], in" after the attribution dash and before the output of the parameters above, thus one or more of those parameters must also be supplied. If you need to cite a fictional speaker in an article about a single work of fiction, where repeating the author and title information would be redundant, you can just use the |author= parameter instead of |character=.
Technically, all citation information can be given in a single parameter, as in: |source=Anonymous interview subject, in Jane G. Arthur, "The Aerodynamics of Shaved Weasels", ''Perspectives on Mammal Barbering'' (2016), Bram Xander Yojimbo (ed.) But this is a bit messy, and will impede later efforts to generate metadata from quotation attribution the way we are already doing with source citations. This is much more usable:
|character=Anonymous interview subject
|author=Jane G. Arthur
|title="The Aerodynamics of Shaved Weasels"
|source=''Perspectives on Mammal Barbering'' (2016), Bram Xander Yojimbo (ed.)
Later development can assign a CSS class and so forth to these separate parameters, upon which scripts would be able to operate (e.g. to look up things in WikiQuote).
Rarely used technical parameters
|multiline=– keep forced linebreaks in output.Notes:- Will only be applied if at least one of these other parameters or its aliases is not empty (including implicit, unnamed parameters):
|author=,|title=,|source=, or|character=. - The value does not matter, as long it is not empty. Using a so called speaking parameter (such as
trueoryes) is highly recommended. Avoid values that can surprise users (e.g.falseorno).
- Will only be applied if at least one of these other parameters or its aliases is not empty (including implicit, unnamed parameters):
|style=– allows specifying additional CSS styles (not classes) to apply to the<blockquote>...</blockquote>element.|class=– allows specifying additional HTML classes to apply to the same element.
Reference citations
A reference citation can be placed before the quote, after the quote, or in the |source= parameter:
- Typical use: In the regular-prose introduction to the quotation, when a quotation is given without the displayed
|author=,|title=, or|source=parameters:According to Pat Doe, in "Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015):<ref>...</ref> {{blockquote |text=Quoted material.}} - At the end of the quotation, when a quotation is given without the displayed
|author=,|title=, or|source=parameters, and placement before the quote isn't appropriate (e.g. because the material immediately before the quote isn't cited to the same source or introduces multiple quotes from different sources:Pat Doe and Chris Foo took opposing positions: {{blockquote |text=Doe's Quoted material.<ref>...</ref>}} {{blockquote |text=Foo's Quoted material.<ref>...</ref>}} - After the
|source=value (if a value is given for the|source=parameter other than the<ref>...</ref>itself):One expert noted in 2015: {{blockquote |text=Quoted material. |author=Pat Doe |source="Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015)<ref>...</ref>}} - Deprecated:
After the quoted person's name in|author=, or after the work's title in|title=, when a|source=parameter is not being added:As noted in "Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015): {{blockquote |text=Quoted material. |author=Pat Doe<ref>...</ref>}}
Note: Please avoid this format, as it will pollute the author or title metadata with non-author or non-title information.
Please do not place the citation in a |author= or |source= parameter by itself, as it will produce a nonsensical attribution line that looks like this:
Please also do not put it just outside the {{blockquote}} template, as this will cause a:
[1]on a line by itself.Limitations
If you do not provide text, the template generates a parser error message, which will appear in red text in the rendered page.
If any parameter's actual value contains an equals sign (=), you must use a named parameter (e.g. |text="E=MC2" is a formula everyone knows but few understand, not a blank-name positional parameter. The text before the equals sign gets misinterpreted as a named parameter otherwise. Be wary of URLs, which frequently contain this character. Named parameters are always safer, in this and other templates.
If any parameter's actual value contains characters used for wiki markup syntax (such as pipe, brackets, single quotation marks, etc.), you may need to escape it. See {{!}} and friends.
Do not combine named and unnamed parameters. For example, if |text= is used for the quotation, followed by an unnamed parameter for the source, the first unnamed parameter will be interpreted as |1= instead of |2=, and it will be ignored. This is a problem inherent in any template that uses multiple unnamed parameters with aliases.
Next to right-floated boxes
As of September 2015,[update] the text of a block quotation may rarely overflow (in Firefox or other Gecko browsers) a right-floated item (e.g. a {{Listen}} box, when that item is below another right-floated item of a fixed size that is narrower. In Safari and other Webkit browsers (and even more rarely in Chrome/Chromium) the same condition can cause the block quotation to be pushed downward. Both of these problems can be fixed by either:
- removing the sizing on the upper item and letting it use its default size (e.g. removing
###x###pxsizing or|upright=from a right-floated image above a wider right-floated object that is being overflowed by quotation text; or - using
|style=in the quotation template.overflow:inherit;
There may be other solutions, and future browser upgrades may eliminate the issue. It arises at all because of the blockquote {overflow: hidden;} CSS declaration in Mediawiki:Common.css, which itself works around other, more common display problems. A solution that fixes all of the issues is unknown at this time.
Vanishing quotes
In rare layout cases, e.g. when quotes are sandwiched between userboxes, a quotation may appear blanked out, in some browsers. The workaround for this problem is to add |style= to such an instance of the template.overflow:inherit;
Line breaks
This template sets a text style which might ignore one blank line, and so the template must be ended with a break (newline) or the next blank line might be ignored. Otherwise, beware inline, as:
text here {{blockquote|this is quoted}} More text here
spans a blank line, unless a {{blockquote|...}} is ended with a line break, then the next blank line might be ignored and two paragraphs joined.
The <blockquote> element and any templates that use it do not honor newlines:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> <blockquote> Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4 </blockquote> </syntaxhighlight> |
|
An easy solution is to use the {{poem quote}} template instead of <blockquote>...</blockquote>. This is effectively the same as using the <poem> tag inside <blockquote>, which converts line breaks to <br /> tags:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> <blockquote><poem> Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4 </poem></blockquote> </syntaxhighlight> |
|
To markup actual paragraphs within block quotations, entire blank lines can be used between them, which will convert to <p>...</p> tags:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> <blockquote> Paragraph 1 Paragraph 2 Paragraph 3 </blockquote> </syntaxhighlight> |
|
Note that it may be necessary to put a line break in the wikitext before <blockquote> and after </blockquote> in order for the paragraphs to render with the intended separation. (This also makes the wikitext easier to read.)
This paragraph style also works with {{blockquote}}, which is a replacement for <blockquoteCategory:Pages using xtag template with unsupported tag name> that also has parameters to make formatting of the attribution more convenient and consistent.
Blockquote and templates that call it, and are indented with colon (:), bulleted with asterisk (*), or numbered with number (#), may generate errors and incorrectly display anything after a newline character. To ensure that the blockquote displays properly, put all of the wikitext on a single line, with no manual line breaks, like this, ending with the </blockquote> tag or the closing braces of the template still on the same line:
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> :<blockquote>Paragraph 1<br>Paragraph 2</blockquote> </syntaxhighlight> |
|
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html">
*{{blockquote|Paragraph 1<br>Paragraph 2}}
</syntaxhighlight> |
|
| Markup | Renders as |
|---|---|
<syntaxhighlight lang="html"> #<blockquote>Paragraph 1<br>Paragraph 2</blockquote> </syntaxhighlight> |
|
Nested quotations
The <blockquote>...</blockquote> element has styles that change the font size: on desktop, text is smaller; on mobile, it is larger. This change is relative to the enclosing context, meaning that if you quote from a source that itself uses a block quotation, you'll find that the inner quotation is either really tiny and hard to read, or really large and barely fits on the screen. To fix this issue, add the parameter |style= on any inner {{blockquote}} templates.font-size:inherit;
Technical issues with block templates
If the block-formatted content uses a named parameter (including |1=) and begins with a list (or any other wikimarkup that is dependent upon a specific markup character being at the beginning of a line), because MediaWiki behavior is to strip whitespace from named parameters, a <nowiki /> and a new line must exist before the list (or whatever) starts. This no longer affects unnamed parameters. Compare:
| code | result | |
|---|---|---|
| Works as intended | {{Blockquote| |
|
| FAIL | {{Blockquote|1= |
|
| Works as intended | {{Blockquote|1=<nowiki /> |
|
To embed a table in block markup like this, the block template's content parameter must be named or numbered and include the self-closing nowiki – as in |1=<nowiki /> – then every | character in the table markup must be escaped with {{!}}. An alternative is to use explicit HTML <table>, <tr>, <th>, and <td> markup.
TemplateData
TemplateData for Blockquote
Adds a block quotation.
| Parameter | Description | Type | Status | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| text | text 1 quote | The text to quote
| Content | required |
| author | author 2 cite sign | The writer of the source
| Content | suggested |
| title | title 3 | The work being quoted from
| Content | suggested |
| source | source 4 | A source for the quote
| Content | suggested |
| character | character 5 char | The speaker within the work who is being quoted
| Content | optional |
| multiline | multiline | Keeps forced linebreaks in output
| String | optional |
| style | style | Additional CSS styles (not classes) to apply
| String | optional |
| class | class | Additional HTML classes to apply
| String | optional |