Aug 24th 03
Semantic Clean Up in Aisle 4!
A couple people have recently asked me why I use a div with a set class to define my pull quotes. They said that a blockquote would be more appropriate.
I went to the XHTML Reference, and according to it, a blockquote defines a long quotation. Seeing that my pull quotes are usually only about a sentence, I felt that a blockquote was not the way to go. Then I spotted the cite tag, which defines a citation, and that sounded pretty close to what I was looking for.
So, I wanted to ask you, the knowledgable audience: what should I use to define my pull quotes? A blockquote, a citation, or should I stick with how I’m doing it now? Thanks!
5 Comments
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huphtur on Aug 24th 03
use cite, it saves 2×6 chars!
JMulder on Aug 24th 03
You could go for <q> although it’s not even supported in MSIE6. But hey, it does automatically put double quotes around it in Mozilla Firebird. ;)
<cite> would be the way to go for one-liners, in my opinion. Not that anything is wrong with using divs.
Gavin on Aug 24th 03
I actually think using a div it’s fine, but <blockquote> would be an alternative. <q> is too unstable in IE – you’d have to totally re-style it to get it close to working properly, heh…
James Craig on Aug 25th 03
<q> should be used for inline quotes. <blockquote> is the best option for your pull quotes, even though they are not “long”; it just has the option to include several paragraphs or more in one blockquote element.
Regarding WinIE’s inconsistency (MacIE works fine), I usually use a comment hack or two to target that browser and style the quote in italics, then define my quotes and remove the italics for all other browsers.
James Craig on Aug 25th 03
Oh yeah, <cite> is for bibliographical references like the title of a book (<cite>Moby Dick</cite>) and should not be used for quotes… However, you should use the cite attribute of <p> and <blockquote> to define the citation URL for the quote if one is available.