Tag
block quotes
3 posts
- 06SaturdayDifferent Angle·
For years I thought block quotes showed respect for the source; scanning my own writing as a reader revealed that even I was skipping right past them.
A Block Quote Is Not Respect: The Comfort of Cutting and Pasting
Dumping a long block quote is often mistaken for respect toward the source; in truth, it is unrefined raw material that readers skip. When we tried trimming and weaving everything inline, we tripped in three critical places. Here is the conditional map with micro-examples.
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- 04ThursdayCase Study·
I scanned my draft without reading the quotes, and the truth became obvious: the piece said the exact same thing without them. The quotes weren't evidence; they were decor—and decor gets skipped.
Stitching Quotes: The First Round Review Weave and the Flawed Imitation That Bloated Our Draft by a Third
For years, we dropped quotes in standalone blocks and ended with 'as seen above'; readers skipped them. We dissected First Round Review articles sentence by sentence to map the claim-bridge-quote-handoff weave, only to face our own failed imitation that bloated our draft by a third: a bridge doesn't introduce a quote—it establishes the claim the quote proves.
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- 01MondayOpening·
For years I thought quotes were self-evident proof; reader behavior showed otherwise—people skipped indented blocks in a single sweep.
Dropping Quotes and Running: What Readers Miss When You Write "As Seen Above"
For years we pasted expert quotes in blocks and typed 'as seen above' beneath them; readers skipped anything indented. Drawing on our own failed attempts, we explore why a quote is never proof on its own, why the bridge between claim and source carries the weight, and when that bridge merely bloats your prose.
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