HTML Quotations, Citations and Abbreviations
Learn when to use blockquote, q, cite, abbr, address and bdo elements for quotations and related text.
Block and inline quotations
Use <blockquote> for a longer quotation and <q> for a short quotation within a sentence. The optional cite attribute can store a source URL; add visible attribution separately when readers need to know the source.
<blockquote cite="https://example.com/source">
A longer quotation goes here.
</blockquote>
<p>The guide says, <q>practice makes progress</q>.</p>Citations, abbreviations and contact information
<cite> identifies the title of a creative work, such as a book or film. <abbr> marks an abbreviation; its title attribute can provide the expanded form. <address> provides contact information for the nearest page or article.
Text direction
<bdo> overrides the direction in which a short text run is displayed. Set its dir attribute to ltr or rtl. It does not reverse the characters in the text.