Quotations (quote / quotation / csquotes)

When you reproduce someone else’s words as a self-contained passage, setting them off as a block quotation — indented from both margins rather than woven into your sentence — makes the boundaries of the quotation obvious at a glance. LaTeX ships with three environments for this: **quote (short quotations), quotation (long, multi-paragraph quotations), and verse (poetry); and the modern csquotes** package adds \blockquote, which switches between inline and displayed form automatically by length. This page covers these quotation *blocks*. The quote *marks* themselves (“ ” and \enquote) are covered on a separate page.

First, the terms. An inline (run-in) quotation is a short quotation set within your sentence and wrapped in quote marks; a block (displayed) quotation is a longer passage broken out as its own indented paragraph. By convention, a quotation longer than about three or four lines (or roughly forty words) is set as a block. For how to type the quote marks themselves and how to use \enquote, see the “Quotes & dashes” page; here we focus on the block environments.

The quote environment (short quotations)

quote is the most basic block-quotation environment. It indents its contents from both the left and right margins and applies no first-line paragraph indentation**. You simply wrap the passage in \begin{quote} … \end{quote}; no quotation marks are added automatically (add them yourself if you want them). It suits a short quotation of roughly one paragraph, or a series of short, self-contained lines (mottoes, epigraphs, paired sayings).

\begin{quote}
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The five boxing
wizards jump quickly, and pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
\end{quote}

This single paragraph is set at a narrower width than the body text, with no first-line indent. You *can* put blank lines inside quote to make several paragraphs, but because there is no first-line indent the paragraph breaks become hard to see. For a quotation that spans paragraphs, quotation (next) is the better fit.

The quotation environment (long quotations)

quotation** is also a both-sides-indented block quotation, but unlike quote it indents the first line of each paragraph and keeps the space between paragraphs small (0pt plus 1pt by default). In other words, it marks paragraph breaks the same way ordinary body text does — by first-line indentation. It is meant for long quotations of more than one paragraph: an extended excerpt from a book, a passage containing dialogue, and the like.

\begin{quotation}
This is the first paragraph of a longer quotation. Its first line
is indented, just like ordinary body text.

This is the second paragraph. Because each paragraph is indented,
the boundaries between them stay clear even without blank space.
\end{quotation}

The rule of thumb is simple: **one paragraph → quote; two or more → quotation.** Both are implemented internally as lists, so appropriate vertical space is added around the environment automatically. The table summarizes the difference.

Note that quote and quotation insert no quotation marks. In English-language typography the indentation of a block quote is itself the signal of quotation, so it is conventional to omit the marks in displayed quotes. If you want marks added (or omitted) automatically and consistently, csquotes, described below, is the convenient choice.

The verse environment (poetry)

For text where line breaks carry meaning — poetry and song lyrics — use the **verse environment. Like the others it indents from both margins, but the crucial difference is that you control where each line ends**. End a line with the explicit line-break command \\, and separate stanzas with a blank line. Justification (the stretching of line ends) is switched off.

\begin{verse}
Roses are red, \\
Violets are blue, \\
This stanza ends here.

A new stanza begins after the blank line, \\
and its lines are set the same way.
\end{verse}

A second hallmark is its handling of long lines. When a line is too wide for the page, verse gives the wrapped remainder (the run-over) a hanging indent, and keeps that indentation until you explicitly start a new line with \\. This visually distinguishes “one logical line that merely wrapped” from “a new line,” so the line structure of the poem is preserved.

For more elaborate poetry typesetting — numbering stanzas, centering a block of lines on its longest line, printing line numbers in the margin — the dedicated verse package offers extra features, but for plain poems the standard verse environment is enough.

csquotes — \blockquote, which adapts to length

Choosing between quote and quotation by hand means deciding for yourself whether a quotation is short or long and switching environments accordingly. The **csquotes package’s \blockquote{…}** *automates* that decision. It measures the length of the text and, if it exceeds a threshold, sets it as a displayed block quotation (by default using the quote environment internally, with no quote marks added); if it does not, it sets it as an inline quotation (with marks, exactly like \textquote).

The threshold is 3 lines by default. You can instead measure words — e.g. thresholdtype=words with threshold=50 for a 50-word cutoff. And by default parthreshold is enabled, so any explicit paragraph or line break inside the quotation forces display mode regardless of length — matching the intuition that a multi-paragraph quotation should always be a block.

\usepackage[autostyle=true]{csquotes}
% ...
% Short → typeset inline, with quotation marks:
\blockquote{Brevity is the soul of wit.}

% Long (over the threshold) → typeset as an indented block, no marks:
\blockquote{This passage runs well past three lines, so csquotes
sets it off as its own indented paragraph automatically, without
any manual choice between the quote and quotation environments.}

When you want only short, inline quotations, use **\textquote{…}. It always** wraps its text in quotation marks as an inline quote and never switches to a block. \textquote can also attach a source: \textquote[⟨cite⟩]{⟨text⟩} takes the citation in an optional argument (and you may pass trailing punctuation in a further [⟨punct⟩] argument).

csquotes — quotations with citations and languages

The real power of csquotes is that a quotation becomes a *semantic* element. You can bind a quotation to its citation in a single command, and switch quotation-mark style and hyphenation according to the language of the quoted text. In academic writing this integration is what pays off.

\blockcquote** is \blockquote with an **automated citation (\cite) built in**: \blockcquote[⟨prenote⟩][⟨postnote⟩]{⟨key⟩}{⟨text⟩}. The ⟨postnote⟩ is usually a page number and ⟨key⟩ is the citation key. A long quotation is set as a block with its citation; a short one is set inline with its citation. The inline counterpart is **\textcquote**. These hook into citation machinery such as biblatex or natbib.

% Block quotation that also prints a citation (page 67 of key "doe2020"):
\blockcquote[][67]{doe2020}{The argument develops over several
sentences and is long enough to be set as an indented block.}

For foreign-language quotations there are language-aware variants. **\foreignblockquote{⟨lang⟩}{⟨text⟩}** combines \blockquote with the babel/polyglossia language switch: it switches the hyphenation patterns and sets the quotation marks in that language’s style (a long quote is wrapped in otherlanguage* and then made a block). When you want the marks to stay in the surrounding language and only the hyphenation to follow the quoted language, use **\hyphenblockquote{⟨lang⟩}{…}**. Each has a citation-bearing partner such as \foreignblockcquote.

Why prefer csquotes? Because it handles the short/long format, the presence or absence of marks, per-language style, and the link to citations under one consistent, automatic policy — and if you change your mind later, a single preamble setting re-applies to every quotation. Bare quote/quotation are convenient, but the larger, more multilingual, and more citation-heavy a document becomes, the more csquotes’ robustness pays off.

Which to use

• Short, one-paragraph quote → quote. Quick, no package needed.
• Long, multi-paragraph quote → quotation (paragraphs marked by first-line indent).
• Poetry / lyrics → verse (lines with \\, stanzas by blank line, long lines hang).
• Auto short/long switching, marks added for you → \blockquote from csquotes.
• Quotation plus its citation → \blockcquote / \textcquote (integrates with biblatex, etc.).
• Foreign-language quotations → \foreignblockquote / \hyphenblockquote (keep language and marks in sync).

All these environments are built internally as lists, so — like itemize — they add vertical space around themselves and can be nested. To fine-tune line breaks inside a quotation, see “Line & paragraph breaks”; for indentation and centering in general, the “Text alignment” page is also useful.