The Blockquote element is used to contain text quoted from another source.

Typically, blockquote rendering would be a slight extra left and right indent, and possibly rendered in an italic font. The Blockquote element causes a paragraph break, and typically provides space above and below the quote.

The HTML specification implies that rendering on single-font systems (e.g. on non graphical browsers) may reflect the quotation style of Internet mail, which is normally represented by putting a vertical line of graphic characters, such as the greater than symbol (>), in the left margin.

Example of use:

In "Hard Drive", a former Microsoft project manager has said,
<BLOCKQUOTE>
"Imagine an extremely smart, billionaire genius who is 14 years old and subject to temper tantrums"
</BLOCKQUOTE>

would render as:

In "Hard Drive", a former Microsoft project manager has said,

"Imagine an extremely smart, billionaire genius who is 14 years old and subject to temper tantrums"

Internet Explorer (4.0 and above) also support the use of the TITLE attribute. This can be used for informational purposes, with Internet Explorer treating the value of the TITLE attribute as a 'ToolTip' which is displayed when the reader passes their mouse over the contents of the <BLOCKQUOTE> element. For example, adding :

. . .TITLE="From 'Hard Drive' ISBN : 0-471-94081-X"

to the above example, the section displays as :

In "Hard Drive", a former Microsoft project manager has said,

"Imagine an extremely smart, billionaire genius who is 14 years old and subject to temper tantrums"

displaying the ToolTip when the mouse pauses on the quote.

LANG="language setting"
The LANG attribute can be used to specify what language the <BLOCKQUOTE> element is using. It accepts any valid ISO standard language abbreviation (for example "en" for English, "de" for German etc.) For more details, see the Document Localisation section for more details.

LANGUAGE="Scripting language"
The LANGUAGE attribute can be used to expressly specify which scripting language Internet Explorer 4.0 uses to interpret any scripting information used in the <BLOCKQUOTE> element. It can accept values of vbscript, vbs, javascript or jscript. The first two specify the scripting language as Visual Basic Script, the latter two specify it as using Javascript (the default scripting language used if no LANGUAGE attribute is set.

CLASS="Style Sheet class name"
The CLASS attribute is used to specify the <BLOCKQUOTE> as using a particular style sheet class. For example, a style sheet class defined as:

<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
.RedQuote {color : #FF0000}
</STYLE>

could then be referenced as:

<BLOCKQUOTE CLASS="RedQuote">The less you know, the more you believe</BLOCKQUOTE>

and would be displayed in red. See the Style Sheets overview for more information and style sheet settings.

STYLE="In line style setting"
As well as using previously defined style sheet settings, the <BLOCKQUOTE> element can have in-line stylings attached to it. For example:

<BLOCKQUOTE STYLE="{color : #FF0000}">The less you know, the more you believe</BLOCKQUOTE>

would display exactly as the above example. See the Style Sheets section for more details about style sheet settings.

ID="Unique element identifier"
The ID attribute can be used to either reference a unique style sheet identifier, or to provide a unique name for the <BLOCKQUOTE> element for scripting purposes. Any <BLOCKQUOTE> element with an ID attribute can be directly manipulated in script by referencing its ID attribute, rather than working through the All collection to determine the element. See the Scripting introduction topic for more information.

Every <BLOCKQUOTE> element in a document is an object that can be manipulated through scripting. Note that scripting of the <BLOCKQUOTE> element/object is only supported by Internet Explorer 4.0 in its Dynamic HTML object model. Netscape does not support direct scripting of the <BLOCKQUOTE> element at all.

<BLOCKQUOTE...> Properties
The <BLOCKQUOTE...> element/object supports all of the standard Dynamic HTML properties (i.e. className, document, id, innerHTML, innerText, isTextEdit, lang, language, offsetHeight, offsetLeft, offsetParent, offsetTop, offsetWidth, outerHTML, outerText, parentElement, parentTextEdit, sourceIndex, style, tagName and title). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML properties topics.

<BLOCKQUOTE...> Methods
The <BLOCKQUOTE...> element/object supports all of the standard Dynamic HTML methods (i.e. click, contains, getAttribute, insertAdjacentHTML, insertAdjacentText, removeAttribute, scrollIntoView and setAttribute). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML Methods topics.

<BLOCKQUOTE...> Events
The <BLOCKQUOTE...> element/object supports all of the standard Dynamic HTML events (i.e. onclick, ondblclick, ondragstart, onfilterchange, onhelp, onkeydown, onkeypress, onkeyup, onmousedown, onmousemove, onmouseout, onmouseover, onmouseup and onselectstart). Details of these can be found in the standard Dynamic HTML events topics.

© 1995-1998, Stephen Le Hunte