---
name: Pull quote
slug: pull-quote
category: typography
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A phrase lifted out of an article and set large as a graphic
  element, to draw a browsing reader into the text.
aliases:
  - name: pullquote
  - name: callout quote
  - name: lift-out quote
  - name: block quote
    source: community
  - name: quote
    source: component-gallery
tags:
  - content-design
  - editorial
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - blockquote
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - sidenote
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Pull Quotes (Fonts.com)
    url: https://www.myfonts.com/pages/fontscom-learning-fyti-typographic-tips-pull-quotes/
  - title: How to Attract Attention With Pull Quotes (CreativePro)
    url: https://creativepro.com/how-to-attract-attention-pull-quotes/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: advertising a line of the article to a scanner
---

The pull quote is a magazine device, and its job is advertising. A reader
flipping past a spread will read the headline, the caption, and one more thing,
and the pull quote is that thing: a sentence promoted out of the running text and
set at display size so it can be read from across the room. Its secondary job is
compositional, breaking a grey column into pieces and giving the eye somewhere to
land. The web inherited both jobs and the rules, oversized type, a rule or a
heavy quote mark, generous space around it, mostly unchanged.

The thing that makes it unusual to build is that it duplicates content. The
sentence is on the page twice, once as prose and once as decoration, which means
a screen reader will announce it twice unless you say not to. Mark the decorative
copy [aria-hidden](/aria-hidden) and the problem disappears, since the real
sentence is still there in the paragraph it came from. The demo above does
exactly that. Markup is usually a `<figure>` or an `<aside>`, not a heading, so
the lifted phrase does not gatecrash the document outline.

Do not confuse it with a blockquote, despite the names people use. A blockquote
quotes something from outside the document, it is content, removing it loses
information, and it wants a `<blockquote>` with a `cite`. A pull quote quotes the
document itself, it is decoration, and removing it loses nothing but the
invitation. The same visual treatment gets used for both, which is where the
confusion comes from, and it is why so many pull quotes end up marked up as
quotations of the article by its own author.

The craft is mostly in the choosing. Pick a sentence that stands on its own out of
context, keep it to a dozen words or so, and never edit it into something the
article does not actually say, because a reader who takes the bait and finds no
such sentence has been lied to. Place it beside or after the passage it comes
from rather than before it, or you spoil your own line. On a narrow screen the
inset becomes a full-width interruption rather than a shape the text wraps
around, so decide there whether it still earns its place or whether the column
reads better without it.