Chapter 4, Lesson 7

If you already know how indent text in HTML, you can skip this lesson.

"Block-quoting" is a document presentation method whereby a text passage is set-off from the rest of the text by indenting it, and placing it in it's own paragraph. This can be very useful, because to accomplish the same thing using " " would require that you force line breaks (to avoid having a line "wrap" to the next line without you knowing it). This is always tricky, since you don't know what size screen is going to be used on the receiving browser. Block-quoting, then, allows you to indent a paragraph while still retaining the benefits of browser word-wrapping.

Block-quoting is accomplished with the following tag pair:

<BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE>

Let's see how this might be applied:

<B>Here's a short passage from Shakespeare's <CITE>Romeo and Juliet</CITE>:</B>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
When he shall die, 
take him and cut him out in little stars, 
and he will make the face of heaven so fine 
that all the world will be in love with night, 
and pay no worship to the garish sun. 
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<B>and yet another excerpt from the same play:</B>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
They may seize <BR>
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand <BR>
And steal immortal blessing from her lips, <BR>
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty, <BR>
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.<BR> 
<P>
<B>and from his <CITE>Love's Labour's Lost </CITE>:</B>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: <BR>
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; <BR>
They are the books, the arts, the academes, <BR>
That show, contain, and nourish all the world. <BR>
</BLOCKQUOTE></BLOCKQUOTE>

Here's a short passage from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet:

When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will be in love with night, and pay no worship to the garish sun.

They may seize
On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand
And steal immortal blessing from her lips,
Who, even in pure and vestal modesty,
Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.

and from his Love's Labour's Lost :

From women's eyes this doctrine I derive:
They sparkle still the right Promethean fire;
They are the books, the arts, the academes,
That show, contain, and nourish all the world.

Notice that, in the first passage, the browser word-wrapping feature determined the line-breaks, because there were no explicit <BR>'s in that text. In the second passage, however, we inserted our own explicit line breaks. In addition, observe that the opening and closing 'blockquote' tags cause a double end-of-line action (like a paragraph). Also notice that any text inside the "blockquote" gets indented.

Because we "nested" the third 'blockquote' inside the second 'blockquote', we got a double indentation on the third passage.

"Nesting" is an important concept in HTML documents. "Nesting" means that one tag is completely enclosed by another tag. (Sorta like it makes its "nest" within the confines of another tag). Nesting requires that the last tag opened must be the first tag closed. If you open tag 'A', then open tag 'B', you should close tag 'B' first, and then tag 'A'. If you fail to abide by this rule, the browser may produce unpredictable results. Look closely at the source code and results nested 'blockquotes' in the demo; see how we've complied with the HTML nesting rule.

If I had included one of my own poems instead of the Bard's, the block-quoted passage would more likely come to be known as a "BLOCKHEAD" quote.

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Overseer: Monty Northrup ... ... leave e-mail ...

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