Quotations and Citations

Simple Quotations

The <q> element is used for defining short quotations in web pages. By default, the content enclosed within the quotation element will be surrounded by double quotes.

 William Shakespeare once said, <q>To thine own self, be true.</q>

Blockquotes

In some cases, we may need to quote a block of text from another source. In this case, the blockquote element is useful for defining a block or section of text as a quote.

 

UNICEF mission statement:

<blockquote cite="https://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html">
UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection
of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities
to reach their full potential.
</blockquote>

We can use the cite attribute for specifying the source for the quote.

Cite element

Even though the cite attribute can be used for citing the sources, browsers don’t usually make use of cite attribute. This is where the cite element comes in. HTML5 has a dedicated element for citations. The cite element denotes the name of the source. Since it is a standalone element, it will be much flexible for use. Citations can also be styled differently using CSS to emphasize the sources.

 

<h3><cite>
<a href="https://www.unicef.org/about/who/index_mission.html">UNICEF mission statement:
</cite></h3>

<blockquote>
UNICEF is mandated by the United Nations General Assembly to advocate for the protection
 of children's rights, to help meet their basic needs and to expand their opportunities
 to reach their full potential.
</blockquote>

Abbreviations

We can use the <abbr> element for marking up abbreviations and acronyms. The full form of the abbreviation could be provided as a tooltip by including it in a title attribute.

<abbr title="World Health Organization">WHO</abbr> has its headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland.

There is an <acronym> element which is used for defining acronyms. But since acronyms are just a subset of abbreviations and there are no advantages to using the <acronym> element, it is better to stick with the <abbr> element.

Address element

We can provide an address for the document using the address element. The address element is usually meant for the person who wrote the web page and not any other address.

<address>
Sherlock Holmes,<br>
221B, Baker Street,<br>
London.
</address>