[whatwg] The blockquote element spec vs common quoting practices

[Bjartur Thorlacius]

On 7/14/11, Kevin Marks <kevinmarks at gmail.com> wrote:
> There is another common pattern, seen in blogging a lot, of putting
> the citation at the top eg
> As <cite class="vcard"><a href="http://www.gyford.com/phil/"
> class="url" rel="acquaintance met colleague"><abbr title="Phil Gyford"
> class="fn">Phil</abbr></a></cite> wrote about the <a
> href="http://www.gyford.com/phil/writing/2009/04/28/geocities.php">ugly
> and neglected fragments</a> of Geocities:</p>
>
> <blockquote>
>   <p>GeoCities is an awful, ugly, decrepit mess. And this is why it
> will be sorely missed. It’s not only a fine example of the amateur web
> vernacular but much of it is an increasingly rare example of a
> <em>period</em> web vernacular. GeoCities sites show what normal,
> non-designer, people will create if given the tools available around
> the turn of the millennium.</p>
> </blockquote>
>
> (from jeremy) or pretty much any post here:
>
> http://www.theatlantic.com/ta-nehisi-coates/
>
> Would a <header> pattern in the blockquote work for this?
>
> If I was writing a detector for this pattern, <a> followed by a colon
> and  <blockquote> would do it pretty reliably...
>
Ideally, the same markup should be used to mark citations up whether
they're displayed one way or another. Whether to render author name(s)
before or after the quotation is a matter of style.