Template talk:Quote box

Quote with image

Hi. There is an open query at Wikipedia:Help_desk#Quote_with_image. Anyone is most welcome to reply, thank you! M. Billoo 11:25, 11 December 2025 (UTC)

Attribution dash

This template does not currently differentiate the quote itself and its author/source, which is confusing. This is in contrast to other quote templates like {{Verse translation}} or {{Poem quote}}. Is this something that is meant to be handled by the end users of the template? If so, the examples in the documentation should be updated to include the dash. Opencooper (talk) 06:26, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

All three templates also differentiate the quote itself and its author/source using different font sizes.

I wouldn't mind adding a dash to {{Quote box}} just for the sake of consistency. It is used in articles, so I would like to hear opinions of people familiar with MOS. I looked at MOS:QUOTE, but it is mostly about preserving meaning of the quoted text, not how to present it. —⁠andrybak (talk) 07:40, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

The documentation of the template links to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Block quotations (MOS:BLOCKQUOTE), which links to Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Other uses for em dashes, quote: An indented em dash may be used when attributing the source of a passage, such as a block quotation or poem. [...] Most of Wikipedia's quotation templates provide this formatting automatically.

It makes me wonder: are there usages of {{Quote box}} which already incorporate the dash on their own? —⁠andrybak (talk) 07:51, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Yes, see this search. Might take a while to load. Opencooper (talk) 08:30, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Previous discussions preferred that an em dash be inserted but got stuck on the possibility of two dashes if editors had worked around the deficiency in this template by adding their own dash, as mentioned above. I have adjusted the sandbox to strip initial hyphen, en dash, and em dash characters in |author= and |source=. I added an em dash and a thin space at the start of the attribution. While I was there, I fixed some logic that was hiding sources and quotes in some cases. Please take a careful look at Template:Quote box/testcases, scrolling slowly to see what happens to each attribution. Tell me where there are errors, and I will try to fix them. Please note the last test case where I used –, which I did not try to substitute; if there are any of those, they may need to be cleaned up manually. I also did not try to catch other types of dash-like characters such as minus signs, which should not be used anyway. (P.S. Here's a faster search; it finds about 10,000 articles.) – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:48, 6 April 2026 (UTC)

Appreciate your work on this so far. I took a look at the test cases and noted the following discrepancies (unrelated to the dashes):

1. with blank text and also a populated quote – the current version only displays the source, while the sandbox version makes the quote text visible.

2. with source but blank author – the current version has no attribution, while the sandbox version makes the source visible.

Overall, the sandbox behavior looks like it correctly replaces initial dashes with an em dash, while stripping secondary dashes when there is both an author and source present. I think it's okay if you did not cover every possible use case, but a majority of them, with any cases like the HTML entity or template versions being replaceable using AWB.

P.S. One other dash many might not know about is the quotation dash (―). Only 16 uses in mainspace. Opencooper (talk) 07:22, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

I have added the quotation dash to the sandbox and the testcases. Are you saying that you approve of the sandbox changes? The word "discrepancies" usually has a negative connotation; I see the numbered changes as "bug fixes" or "improvements", but I am open to other interpretations. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:14, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, that was just me being thorough since you said to look carefully. :p Both are clear improvements. I also verified that the quotation dash test case is correct. Opencooper (talk) 18:33, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

No worries. I have made the sandbox live. Please report any bugs here. Expect to have to fix a few weird dashes (by removing them). Feel free to update the documentation as needed. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:48, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Oh, that was faster than expected. I have AWB rights and can do the runs to remove those cases.

One thing we overlooked: if the source/author already has a dash + space, the dash is stripped, but the original space is kept, resulting in too much space. (example) So any existing space also needs to be removed. I'm not sure if people use other space variants like non-breaking, thin-spaces, hair-spaces, etc., here as well. Opencooper (talk) 03:38, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Update: fixing the uses of templates as source/author = {{ wasn't bad; only around 60 cases, mostly where people used {{small}}. Luckily, the places editors have used {{em dash}}, etc., work fine with the new changes. The other case of entities as source/author = &___;, is going to take longer. There are around a thousand usages, and I only managed around two hundred so far. A majority of them are cases where editors have nonsensically inserted non-breaking spaces in the parameter, despite a dash at the very start of the line unlikely to ever wrap. Too bad   can't be handled in the template, but I'll keep chipping at it in the morrow. Hopefully don't get too many complaints about the doubled dashes until then. Opencooper (talk) 10:22, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

Update: entities also done. Opencooper (talk) 23:43, 11 April 2026 (UTC)

I have fixed the code to automatically remove normal spaces after a dash, e.g. "source = – Source Title". – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:12, 13 April 2026 (UTC)

Confirmed that fixed the issue. I also searched for cases where these dashes were followed by special spaces, templates, or entities, and found only four cases. Thanks a lot for your help with all this! Opencooper (talk) 06:42, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Happy to help. Thanks for all of the cleanup. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:25, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the attribution dash here, but please can the following thinspace ( ) be replaced by a hairspace ({{hair space}}), following MOS:EMOTHER and {{blockquote}}/{{poemquote}}. --Yodin^T 20:30, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

 Done – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:22, 14 April 2026 (UTC)

Thanks! 👍 --Yodin^T 12:19, 15 April 2026 (UTC)

Quotation marks

Does this template require quotes to use quotation marks or not? The template does not appear to address this, but the example shows that it is used without, like a block quotation. Meanwhile, in actual practice, users tend to use one style or the other. Which is correct? Viriditas (talk) 20:55, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

The template documentation links to MOS:BLOCKQUOTE, which says: "The text presented in block quotations and quote boxes (see below) should not itself be enclosed in quotation marks". You are welcome to edit the template documentation to make it clearer. – Jonesey95 (talk) 21:16, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

I came here because of the quote box in this article. I don't think it is clear to have the instructions for template usage linked in an altogether different article. Viriditas (talk) 21:18, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Added to documentation. Viriditas (talk) 21:23, 30 July 2026 (UTC)