Template:Quote

From Guild of Archivists

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

Template documentation[view] [edit] [history] [purge]

Usage[edit source]

{{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 (though these are not usually used in articles; see Reference citations, below).

Note: Block quotes do not normally contain quotation marks.

Examples[edit source]

Basic use:

{{Quote
|text=Quoted material.
}}

With attribution displayed:

{{Quote
|text=Quoted material.
|author=First M. Last
}}

With more attribution:

{{Quote
|text=Quoted material.
|author=First M. Last |title="Article Title"  |source=''Book Title'' (date)
}}

Parameters[edit source]

|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 (e.g., in a URL in a source citation) will break the template.

Displayed attribution[edit source]

These parameters for for displaying attribution information below the quote; this should not be confused with a citing a source (see #Reference citations, below)}}. These parameters are entirely optional, and are usually used with famous quotations, not routine block quotations, which are usually sourced at the end of the introductory line immediately before the quotation, with a normal <ref>...</ref> tag.

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

|title= a.k.a. |3=—Optional title of the work the quote appears in, to display below the quotation. 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. Additional citation information can be provided in a fourth parameter, |source=, below, which will appear after the title.

|source= a.k.a. |4=—Optionally used for additional source information to display, 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=.

|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 attribution 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).

Rarely used technical parameters[edit source]

|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. (See #Nested quotations, below, for the most common use case.)

Parameter list[edit source]

{{Quote
| quote     =
| author    =
| title     =
| source    =
| character =
| multiline =
| style     =
}}

Reference citations[edit source]

A reference citation can be placed before the quote, after the quote, or in the source parameter:

  • Typical use: In the regular-prose introduction to the quotation, when a quotation is given without the displayed author, title, or source parameters: 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 the displayed author, title, or source parameters, and placement before the quote isn't appropriate (e.g. because the material immediately before the quote isn't cited to the same source or introduces multiple quotes from different sources: Pat Doe and Chris Foo took opposing positions: {{quote |text=Doe's Quoted material.<ref>...</ref>}} {{quote |text=Foo's Quoted material.<ref>...</ref>}}
  • After the source value (if a value is given for the source parameter other than the <ref>...</ref> itself): One expert noted in 2015: {{quote |text=Quoted material. |author=Pat Doe |source="Underwater Basketweaving Tips" (2015)<ref>...</ref>}}

Please do not place the citation in a |author= or |source= parameter by itself, as it will produce a nonsensical attribution line. Please also do not put it just outside the {{quote}} template, as this will cause an attribution on a line by itself.

Style[edit source]

Styling is applied through CSS rules in MediaWiki:Common.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;
}

HTML:

<blockquote class="templatequote">
<p>Quote text.</p>
<div class="templatequotecite"><cite>—Author, Source</cite></div>
</blockquote>

Examples[edit source]

Markup:

{{Quote|text=Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.|character=Mark Antony|author=[[William Shakespeare]]|title=''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]''|source=act III, scene I}}

Creates:

Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.

— Mark Antony, in William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act III, scene I

Limitations[edit source]

Errors[edit source]

Pages where this template is not used correctly populate Category:Pages incorrectly using the quote template. The category tracks tranclusions of Template:Quote that have no text given for quotation or use an equals sign in the argument of an unnamed parameter. It also tracks usage of |class=, |id=, |diff=, |4=, or |5=.

TemplateData[edit source]

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

TemplateData for Quote

Adds a block quotation.

Template parameters

ParameterDescriptionTypeStatus
texttext 1 quote

The text to quote

Example
Cry "Havoc" and let slip the dogs of war.
Contentrequired
signsign 2 cite author

The person being quoted

Example
[[William Shakespeare]]
Contentsuggested
sourcesource 3

A source for the quote

Example
''[[Julius Caesar (play)|Julius Caesar]]'', act III, scene I
Contentsuggested