Quotation: What and why?

For any serious writer, it is useful to have a reliable way to set quotations apart from the main flow of a text. A quotation may come from a book, an article, a speech, a poem, or another source that deserves emphasis.

Quoting effectively matters because a well-chosen quotation can add emphasis, support, clarity, and relevance to a text. For further reading, see this essay by Prof. Ruth Finnegan.

Quoting environments in LaTeX

As you may imagine, in LaTeX there is not only one quoting environment. There are several environments for different purposes and different outputs. However, in this post we will focus on the fundamental classes for quoting.

Environment When to use it
quote For a short quotation or a series of short quotations separated by blank lines.
quotation For longer quotations with more than one paragraph, since it indents the first line of each paragraph.

Quote, e.g.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

[...] Before quote
    \begin{quote}
        \lipsum[1]
    \end{quote}
After quote [...]

\end{document}

Output

Output using the quote environment

Quotation, e.g.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

[...] Before quotation
    \begin{quotation}
        \lipsum[1-2]
    \end{quotation}
After quotation [...]

\end{document}

Output

Output using the quotation environment

For further environments, you can check packages like dirtytalk, csquotes, or epigraph. They are all available on CTAN.