Quotations
HTML provides the inline-level q
and block-level blockquote
elements for quotations. The HTML
4.01 specification declares that these elements are supposed to support
the cite
attribute, which is meant to
store a URI that qualifies as a primary source. In practice, this
requirement is ignored by all browsers except Internet Explorer 8, and
thus forces user-facing citations to be crammed into the cite
and a
elements. However, for the sake of preserving
metadata, the URI values that are valid for the cite
attribute should still be provided.
The blockquote
element has three
salient characteristics: user agent styles apply a discernible margin-left
value to it,
quotation marks must be added deliberately to its content, and Strict DTDs
require that it contain at least one block element (usually a
paragraph).
Quotation markup provides only limited support for the :before
and :after
pseudoelements, which are unsupported by
all versions of Internet Explorer except 8. In browsers that
do support :before
and :after
pseudoelements, opening and
closing quotes are specified by the user agent stylesheet for the content
of the q
element; in no current
environment is the blockquote
element
likewise endowed. To add typographically appropriate
quotation marks to blockquote
elements
in those browsers, you should add the following lines to a style
block:
blockquote:before { content: open-quote; } blockquote:after { content: close-quote; }
The :before
and :after
pseudoelements are used as a matter ...
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