Template talk:Quote frame

First line problem

If I enter this:

{{quote frame|
* first
* second
* third
}}

It works as expected:

• first
• second
• third

But if I use the quote parameter,

{{quote frame|quote=
* first
* second
* third
}}

look what happens to the first line:

* first

• second
• third

Anyone know why, or how to fix it? Or a work-around, that doesn't leave a blank first line? Here's one that does... If I use the quote parameter with a <br> on the first line,

{{quote frame|quote=
<br>
* first
* second
* third
}}

it renders okay, except for an extra blank line at the top of the frame:

• first
• second
• third

Thanks! --В²C ☎ 17:57, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Just hit the same problem myself with a numbered list, and found the following workaround:

{{quote frame|quote=<span></span>
* first
* second
* third
}}

renders as

• first
• second
• third

--Lord Belbury (talk) 16:34, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Fixed after experimenting in the sandbox and the testcases page. No need for a workaround. Let me know if it causes unexpected side effects. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:51, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Quick work! Looks good from here. --Lord Belbury (talk) 16:57, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Lord Belbury, unfortunately one side effect I've noticed is that if an indenting character is used in front of the quote frame template (such as : or *), the quoted text no longer appears within and is moved to the next line down. You can see an example of this at WT:Review aggregators#Arbitrary break. --GoneIn60 (talk) 21:47, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

That is normal, and I'm surprised that it ever worked. Indenting blockquotes with asterisk, hash, etc. does not work, per Template:Blockquote#Line breaks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 23:07, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Oops, pinged the wrong editor above. Sorry Lord Belbury!

Jonesey95, thanks for the quick response. The problem is that I, and many others, have been doing this in countless talk page conversations over the years. It's nice to be able to indent Quote frame in talk page conversations to avoid the distraction of replies returning to the far left of the page prematurely. Going back through and checking past conversations, looks like they are all broken now. Is there any way to restore this functionality while resolving the issue above, or are we pretty much stuck at this point? Any other solutions we can think of, such as undoing the change and creating a different sub-template of Quote frame to accommodate LB's request? --GoneIn60 (talk) 05:06, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Also, I noticed {{Talk quote block}} has indenting functionality. Is there anything we can glean from that template's configuration to use here as a workaround? --GoneIn60 (talk) 05:16, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

So frustrating. Oh well, I tried, but failure is always an option. I have restored the previous functionality, and added a section copied from {{blockquote}}, "Technical issues with block templates", to the documentation. Basically, you need to add a <nowiki /> tag before a bulleted list inside this template. Why it works here with an unnamed parameter is a mystery to me. Mediawiki's handling of whitespace is endlessly entertaining. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:54, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Appreciate the effort! Good to know there's a workaround at least. --GoneIn60 (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2021 (UTC)

Using cites

I use SFN-style cites for my work. It would be nice if there was a way to use them directly, "officially", instead of using the various source tags. For instance, |cite= Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:17, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

I think that's what |source= is for. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:56, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing so stupid as a smart person. — Mark Twain, Made up Quotations, Twain 2001

If sfn is what you want to use, you could also just put the sfn after the quotation:

There is nothing so stupid as a smart person.

Sources

• Twain, Mark (2001). Collected Stuff.

References

nowiki

The workaround given in the section "Technical issues with block templates" does not work for me. What works is to put a blank line at the beginning of the quote, with or without the nowiki. GA-RT-22 (talk) 19:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Please link to an example. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:04, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

First, here is what you get if you use the actual "Works as intended" code from the documentation:

*Firstly, ... *Secondly, ... *Thirdly, ...

The documentation should probably be fixed so it looks more like the "FAIL" example above it, with the line breaks shown explicitly. Here is what I get if I insert the needed line breaks myself:

• Firstly, ...
• Secondly, ...
• Thirdly, ...

But it turns out the nowiki tag doesn't do anything, it's the blank line before the list that fixes it. Here's what you get if you leave out the tag but include the blank line:

• Firstly, ...
• Secondly, ...
• Thirdly, ...

And here is what you get if you include the tag but leave out the blank line:

*Firstly, ...

• Secondly, ...
• Thirdly, ...

GA-RT-22 (talk) 22:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Got it. I have added "and a new line" to the documentation. It was already implied by "wikimarkup that is dependent upon a specific markup character being at the beginning of a line", but I have made it explicit. I don't know why the second example code doesn't render as code. I tried a few things but was unable to fix it. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:48, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Template issues

This template has issues:

• it does not support line breaks (only double line breaks get displayed)
• if 'width' parameter is given, it looks weird on mobile (bot in app and browser)
• it also has other, minor, issues like colouring on dark-mode

The alternative, Template:Quote box, has none of those issues, so maybe someone can have a look at how this was solved. ~ JackTheSecond (talk) 23:46, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

does not support line breaks is correct, in the sense that ordinary wiki text also doesn't (you want {{poemquote}} for that). It does support paragraph breaks, although in common with {{quote}} there is a bug in MediaWiki that suppresses them unless you pass the text as an unnamed parameter and start it on a new line. However, IMO this template should not be used in articles as it currently stands. The documentation says it spans the article width, but this is not true on mobile: it is significantly too narrow, which makes the text lines too short to be comfortably readable. It's worse even than bare <blockquote> which (another MediaWiki bug) has a similar problem, and additionally can't be fixed by the user because there's no style parameter. Hairy Dude (talk) 11:58, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

Incorrect html structure?

I believe the current design of this template produces an incorrect html structure.

Currently all the content (quote, author, source) is wrapped inside the <blockquote> and both source and author are further wrapped inside the <cite>.

The blockquote specification however says Attribution for the quotation, if any, must be placed outside the blockquote element. Similarly the cite specification makes it clear that it should only include the title of the work, never the author name.

So the structure should (simplified) be something like

<blockquote>
 {{{content}}}
</blockquote>
<p>
 –{{{author}}}, <cite>{{{title}}}</cite>
</p>

Lokal_Profil 10:46, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

It may also be appropriate to move the "– " preceding the source and the ", " separator between author and title into the css (using ::before) to keep the html cleaner and more accessible to screen readers. / Lokal_Profil 12:02, 1 January 2026 (UTC)

Take a look at this discussion, which may be related. The sandbox version of this template is not protected if you would like to adjust it. Please make sure to check your work using the /testcases page. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:29, 1 January 2026 (UTC)