--- name: Blockquote slug: blockquote category: typography status: published created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z definition: A passage quoted from another source and set off from the running text as its own block, carrying the attribution with it. aliases: - name: block quotation - name: extract tags: - editorial relations: contrastWith: - pull-quote variantOf: [] partOf: [] seeAlso: - sidenote implementations: [] sources: - title: "MDN:
" url: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/blockquote demo: inline exhibit: false useWhen: quoting a source at paragraph length --- A short quotation stays in the sentence, inside quotation marks, and the reader never breaks stride. Past a certain length that stops working: the marks are too far apart to hold the borrowed words together, the sentence hosting them collapses under its own subordinate clauses, and the reader loses track of who is speaking. The blockquote is the fix. The passage leaves the paragraph, becomes a block of its own with space above and below and usually an indent, and the change in shape does the job the quotation marks were failing at. The switch is a judgment about length and weight, and the usual rule of thumb in editorial style guides is around forty words, or four printed lines. Because the block already says "these are someone else's words", the quotation marks come off. Setting a blockquote in marks as well is belt and braces, and it makes the [hanging punctuation](/hanging-punctuation) problem worse: an opening mark at the start of an indented block either sits inside the indent and reads as a ragged left edge, or hangs outside it and needs negative space nobody budgeted for. Where marks do stay, in the inline case, they should be the real [typographic ones](/smart-quotes) rather than the typewriter substitutes. The attribution belongs to the block, not to the paragraph after it. In HTML that is `
` wrapping a `
` and a `
`, or a `