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Who Me Too'd this topic

Ideas on the Blockquote style

Peter Paluch
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

Greetings to all,

After the new editor has been put in place, many things have improved considerably. Thanks for that!

One of the long-requested features is the quotation style, or "Blockquote", as the new editor calls it. I am extremely thankful it has been added, as quoting parts of previous replies is the cornerstone of responding. However, the visual style of the Blockquote is, in my opinion, visually too excessive. Consider the following example


Original statement 1

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer

Paragraph 2, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 2, Line 2 of my answer

Original statement 2

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer

Original statement 3

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer


Compare this to:

Original statement 1

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer

Paragraph 2, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 2, Line 2 of my answer

Original statement 2

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer

Original statement 3

Paragraph 1, Line 1 of my answer
Paragraph 1, Line 2 of my answer


The Blockquote style eats up lots of space unnecessarily, is too obvious, and the resulting post interspersed with Blockquotes is hard to read.

In my opinion, there is no reason for the quotation font to be larger than usual text size, and it does not need to be enclosed in stylized block quotes just to highlight it is a quotation. During the time when the new Blockquote style was not yet available, many of us simply copied the original text and changed the color or set the font to italics, and for the most part, it served its purpose. The Blockquote style is to be used very often; therefore, it should not consume unnecessary space.

My personal suggestions to change the Blockquote style are:

  • Keep the same font size as the usual text; do not make the text in the blockquote larger.
  • Remove the quotation marks from the Blockquote altogether.
  • Keep the background color of the quotation changed the way it is now (grey backround with darker stripe at the left); however, proportionally to the text font size decrease, the dark stripe may need to be thinner.
  • Do not indent the text from either left or right margin too much - otherwise, a larger quotation will result in many more lines than the original due to wrapping. Use as much width as possible.
  • Do not add too much vertical space before and after the Blockquote. Normal paragraph spacing rules should apply.

Any additional or contrary ideas, anyone?

Thank you!

Best regards,
Peter

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