A block quotation (also known as a long quotation or extract) is a quotation in a written document that is set off from the main text as a paragraph, or block of text, and typically distinguished visually using indentation and a different typeface or smaller size font.
This is in contrast to setting it off with quotation marks in a run-in quote. Block quotations are used for long quotations.
Block quotations are used for long quotations. The Chicago Manual of Style recommends using a block quotation when extracted text is 100 words or more, or approximately six to eight lines in a typical manuscript.
In the first centuries of typesetting, quotations were distinguished merely by indicating the speaker, and this can still be seen on some editions of the Bible.
During the Renaissance, quotations were distinguished by setting in a typeface contrasting with the main body text (often Italic type with roman, or the other way round). Block quotations were set this way at full size and full measure.
Quotation marks were first cut in type during the middle of the sixteenth century, and were used copiously by some printers by the seventeenth. In Baroque and Romantic-period books, they could be repeated at the beginning of every line of a long quotation. When this practice was abandoned, the empty margin remained, leaving an indented block quotation.