Template: Quote

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Usage

{{Quote}} 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.

Note: Block quotes do not normally contain quotation marks (see MOS:Blockquote).

Synopsis

Basic use:: {{Quote|text=Quoted material. |author=Attribution |source=Reference }}

Parameters

|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.

|author= a.k.a. |2=—Author/speaker attribution information that will appear below the quotation, and preceded with an attribution dash.

|title= a.k.a. |3=—Title of the work the quote appears in. 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 (see MOS:TITLES). Secondary citation information can be provided in a fourth parameter, |source=, below, which will appear after the title.

|source= a.k.a. |4=—Can optionally be used for additional source information, 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=—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 citations 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).

|multiline=—some of the issues with the formatting of quotes with line breaks can be fixed by using |multiline=y (see the line breaks section for other options).

|style=—allows specifying additional CSS styles (not classes) to apply to the <blockquote>...</blockquote> element. For example, when putting a quotation inside a quotation, use style=font-size:inherit on the inner quotations so that the text doesn't get unreadably small or (on mobile) too large for the screen.

Reference citations

A reference citation can be placed:

In the regular-prose introduction to the quotation:
According to Pat Doe, in "Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015):<ref>...</ref> {{quote |text=Quoted material.}}
At the end of the quotation, when a quotation is given without |author= or |source= (e.g. because the material before the quote makes it clear who is being quoted):
According to Pat Doe, in "Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015): {{quote |text=Quoted material.<ref>...</ref>}}
After the quoted person's name, in |author=, when a |source= is not being added:
As noted in "Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015): {{quote |text=Quoted material. |author=Pat Doe<ref>...</ref>}}
After the source title, in |source= (the preferred location when both attribution parameters are present):
One expert noted in 2015: {{quote |text=Quoted material. |author=Pat Doe |source="Underwater Basketweaving Tips"<ref>...</ref>}}

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:
— ^[1]
Please also do not put it just outside the {{Quote}} template, as this will cause a:
^[1]
on a line by itself.

Style

Styling is applied through CSS rules in MediaWiki:Common.css. <syntaxhighlight lang=css> /* Styling for Template:Quote */ blockquote.templatequote {

    margin-top: 0;

} blockquote.templatequote div.templatequotecite {

   line-height: 1.5em;
   /* @noflip */
   text-align: left;
   /* @noflip */
   padding-left: 1.6em;
   margin-top: 0;

} </syntaxhighlight> HTML: <syntaxhighlight lang=html>

Quote text.

—Author, Source

</syntaxhighlight>

Examples

Markup

<source lang="moin"><blockquote class="templatequote" >Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.<div class="templatequotecite"><cite>— Mark Antony, in [[William Shakespeare]], ''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'', act III, scene I</cite></div>
</blockquote></source>

Renders as

Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.
— Mark Antony, in William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act III, scene I

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 named parameters or a blank-name parameter, as: {{{|text}}} (the text before the equals sign gets interpreted as a named parameter otherwise). Be wary of URLs, which frequently contain this character.

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 Template:! and friends.

Put a break (newline) after the template, or the next blank line might be ignored.

Preserving line breaks and spacing from the original

Use <poem>...</poem> around material, such as poems and interlinear glosses, that require that whitespace formatting be preserve as in the original. Due to limitations of how MediaWiki parses wikimarkup and HTML, attempts to do this by just inserting blank lines and extra spaces will not work. This is true of all block elements, not just block quotations.

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###px sizing or |upright= from a right-floated image above a wider right-floated object that is being overflowed by quotation text; or
using |style=overflow:inherit; in the quotation template.

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=overflow:inherit; to such an instance of the template.

Line breaks

The <blockquote> element and any templates that use it do not honor newlines:

Markup	Renders as
<blockquote> Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4 </blockquote>	Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4

The simplest workaround for this is to use the <poem> tag inside <blockquote>, which will convert line breaks to <br /> tags:

Markup	Renders as
<blockquote><poem> Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4 </poem></blockquote>	<poem> Line 1 Line 2 Line 3 Line 4 </poem>

Nested quotations

The <blockquote>...</blockquote> element has styles that change the font size: on desktop, text is smaller; on mobile, it's 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. Additionally, on mobile, you'll get an extra pair of oversize quotation marks. To fix both these issues, add the parameter |style=font-size:inherit;quotes:none on each of the inner {{quote}} templates.

TemplateData

This is the TemplateData documentation for this template used by VisualEditor and other tools.

See the monthly error report for this template.

TemplateData for Quote

Adds a block quotation.

Template parameters
Parameter		Description	Type	Status
text	`text1quote`	The text to quote Default empty Example Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war. Auto value empty	Content	required
sign	`sign2citeauthor`	The person being quoted Default empty Example [[William Shakespeare]] Auto value empty	Content	suggested
source	`source3`	A source for the quote Default empty Example ''[[Julius Caesar (play)\|Julius Caesar]]'', act III, scene I Auto value empty	Content	suggested

Errors

Pages where this template is not used correctly populate Category:Pages incorrectly using the quote template.

Known problems

This template sets a text style which might ignore one blank line, and so the template must be ended with a break (newline). Otherwise, beware inline, as:

text here {{quote|this is quoted}} More text here spans a blank line

Unless a {{quote|xx}} is ended with a line break, then the next blank line might be ignored and two paragraphs joined.

The above documentation is transcluded from Template:Quote/doc. (edit | history)
Editors can experiment in this template's sandbox (create | mirror) and testcases (create) pages.
Please add categories to the /doc subpage. Subpages of this template.

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