InHTML andXHTML, theblockquoteelement defines "a section [within a document] that is quoted from another source".[1] The syntax is
<blockquote><p>blockquoted text goes here</p></blockquote>
Theblockquote element is used to indicate the quotation of a large section of text from another source. Using the default HTML styling of most web browsers, it will indent the right and left margins both on the display and in printed form, but this may be overridden byCascading Style Sheets (CSS).
The non-semantic use of theblockquote element purely to indent text has been deprecated by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) since HTML 4.[2] The preferred approach is the use ofCSS.
RelatedHTML elements include the<q> and<cite> tags for shorter, probably in-line,quotations and forcitations respectively. AnHTML attribute specific to the<blockquote> and<q> tags iscite= where the provenance of the material quoted may be given. If the quotation is in a language other than that of the main document,lang= and maybedir= attributes may be relevant to specify the language of the quoted text and perhaps its direction, left-to-right or right-to-left.class= may be used for semantic or styling purposes.
In manyWikimarkup languages, the semantics and effect of HTML<blockquote> is different from the use of an initial colon in a paragraph, which may be translated into an HTMLdd element enclosed within adl element. (That is a "data definition" within a "definition list", without there being any preceding "data term" ordt element).