block quotation

Definition:

A direct quotation that is not placed inside quotation marks but instead is set off from the rest of a text by starting it on a new line and indenting it from the left margin.

Examples and Observations:

• "Too many [block quotations] may make your writing seem choppy--or suggest that you have not relied enough on your own thinking."
  (Andrea Lunsford, The St. Martin's Handbook, 2008)



• Researchers in English literature usually follow the style guidelines of the Modern Language Association (MLA). The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers (New York: MLA, 2009) offers this advice for creating block quotations:

  If a quotation extends to more than four lines when run into the text, set it off from your text by beginning a new line, indenting one inch from the left margin, and typing it double-spaced, without adding quotation marks. A colon generally introduces a quotation displayed in this way, though sometimes the context may require a different mark of punctuation or none at all. If you quote only a single paragraph or part of one, do not indent the first line more than the rest. A parenthetical reference for a prose quotation set off from the text follows the last line of the quotation. (94)

  One inch is equivalent to ten spaces.



• Style guides do not agree on the minimum length for a block quotation:

  Chicago [The Chicago Manual of Style] suggests setting off quotations that are eight lines or longer, WIT [Words Into Type] puts the cutoff at five lines, and APA [Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association] calls for setting off quotations longer than forty words. Many publishers have in-house rules that define "longer" as more than, say, six or eight lines.
  (Amy Einsohn, The Copyeditor's Handbook. Univ. of California Press, 2006)

  In some cases, two or more short quotations may be put in block format so that readers can easily compare them.

Also Known As: extract, set-off quotation, block quotes, long quotations