A common element in conventional documents is the block quote, a lengthy copy of text from another document. Traditionally, short quotes are set off with quotation marks, while block quotes are made entirely of separate paragraphs within the main document, typically with special indentation and sometimes italicized — features that you may change through style or class definitions (see Chapter 8).
All of the text within the
<blockquote>
and
</blockquote> tags is set off from the
regular document text, usually with indented left and right margins
and sometimes in italicized typeface. Actual rendering varies from
browser to browser, of course.
The HTML and XHTML standards allow any and all markup within the
<blockquote>, although some physical and
content-based styles may conflict with the font the browser uses for
the block quote. Experimentation will reveal those little warts.
The <blockquote> tag is often used to set
off long quotations from other sources. For example:
We acted incorrectly in arbitrarily changing the Kumquat Festival date. Quoting from the Kumquat Growers' Bylaws: <blockquote> The date of the Kumquat Festival may only be changed by a two-thirds vote of the General Membership, provided that a <strong>60 percent quorum</strong> of the Membership is present. </blockquote> (Emphasis mine) Since such a quorum was not present, the vote is invalid.
gets displayed by Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator as an indented block of text. Figure 4-19 displays the results.
The cite
attribute lets you indicate the source of a quote. The
attribute’s value should be a quote-enclosed URL
that points to the online document and, if possible, the exact
location in the document where the quote came from.
For instance, you could cite the specific section in the Kumquat Grower’s Bylaws in our example. Presumably, someday the browser may actually let you click and view that specific citation via its embedded URL. Today, you must embed an explicit hyperlink to the document; see Chapter 6.
<blockquote cite="http://www.kumquat.com/growers/bylaws#s23.4">
The
dir attribute lets you advise the browser which
direction the text within the <blockquote>
segment should be displayed in, and lang lets you
specify the language used within that tag. [Section 3.6.1.1] [Section 3.6.1.2]
Use
the style attribute to specify an inline style for
the <blockquote> tag, or use the
class attribute to apply a predefined style class
to the tag. [Section 8.1.1] [Section 8.3]
You may assign a unique id
to the <blockquote> tag, as well as a title,
using the respective attribute and accompanying quote-enclosed string
value. [Section 4.1.1.4] [Section 4.1.1.4]
As with
most other tagged segments of content, user-related events can happen
in and around the <blockquote> tag, such as
when a user clicks or double-clicks within its display space. Many of
these events are recognized by the current browsers. With the
respective “on” attribute and
value, you may react to those events by displaying a user dialog box
or activating some multimedia event. [Section 12.3.3]
Introduced in HTML 4.0, the <q>
tag is virtually identical to its
<blockquote> counterpart. The difference is
in their display and application. Use <q>
for short quotes that may be in line with surrounding plain text. The
HTML and XHTML standards dictate that the
<q>-enclosed text begin and end with double
quotes. Netscape 6 adheres to that rule; Internet Explorer does not. The result is
that if you use the <q> tag,
you’ll get two sets of quotation marks with Netscape
if you include your own quotes to satisfy Internet Explorer.
Nonetheless, we recommend that you use the
<q> tag, not only because we like standards,
but we see beyond their display effects to applications in document
handling, information extraction, and so forth.
Use the <blockquote> tag, on the other hand,
for longer segments that the browser will set off — usually as an
indented block — from the surrounding content, such as that shown
in [Figure 4-19].
The cite
attribute works with the <q> tag just like
it does for the <blockquote> tag: it lets
you indicate the source of a quote. The attribute’s
value should be a quote-enclosed URL that points to the online
document and, if possible, the exact location in the document where
the quote came from.
The dir attribute lets you advise the browser
which direction the text within the <q>
segment should be displayed in, and
lang
lets
you specify the language used within that tag. [Section 3.6.1.1] [Section 3.6.1.2]
Use
the style attribute to specify an inline style for
the <q> tag, or use the
class attribute to apply a predefined style class
to the tag. [Section 8.1.1] [Section 8.3]
You may assign a unique id to the <q> tag,
as well as a title, using the respective attribute and accompanying
quote-enclosed string value. [Section 4.1.1.4] [Section 4.1.1.4]
As with most other tagged
segments of content, user-related events can happen in and around the
<q> tag, such as when a user clicks or
double-clicks within its display space. Many of these events are
recognized by the current browsers. With the respective
“on” attribute and value, you may
react to those events by displaying a user dialog box or activating
some multimedia event.
[Section 12.3.3]
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