When does a quotation need to be a block quote, and where does the citation go?

Answered by The Citation Code teamOctober 22, 2026

At what length does a quotation stop running in your sentence and become an indented block? Is the test words or lines? And once it is a block, do quotation marks go around it, and does the citation go inside the block or under it?

If your court’s local rules set a different trigger or spacing, reply below with the rule so members can compare.

The team’s answer

Short answer. Unless your court’s rules draw the line elsewhere, set off a quotation of 50 words or more as a block: indented, with no quotation marks around it, and with its citation on the next line at the left margin. Where court rules speak to this they come first, and the two federal rules below are worded differently.

What court rules say
[Requirement] U.S. Supreme Court, booklet-format documents: “Quotations in excess of 50 words shall be indented.” Sup. Ct. R. 33.1(b). That means 51 words and up. On 8½-by-11-inch paper, text is double spaced “except for indented quotations, which shall be single spaced.” Sup. Ct. R. 33.2(a).
[Requirement] Federal courts of appeals: briefs are double-spaced, yet a quotation longer than two lines “may be indented and single-spaced.” Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(4). That rule allows a block rather than demanding one, and it counts lines, not words.
[Requirement] In a federal appeal, a block does not save words: subdivision (f) of the same rule counts quotations toward the length limit.
[Jurisdiction-specific] State courts and local rules set their own triggers and spacing, so check the rules where you file.

Where no rule sets the line
[House style] Up to 49 words, keep the quotation in your sentence; at 50 or more, set it off. A free public-domain citation manual draws the same line.
[Convention] Indent the block and leave off the outer quotation marks; the indent already tells the reader it is a quotation. Any quotation marks inside the passage stay as the source printed them.
[Convention] Keep the source’s paragraph breaks.
[Convention] Put the citation, with its pinpoint, on the line after the block, starting at the left margin.
[House style] When the trigger is in words, count the words. If the rule counts lines instead, check them in the final document, after the font and margins are set.

Example
Explaining why cost matters, the Court wrote:

Read naturally in the present context, the phrase “appropriate and necessary” requires at least some attention to cost. One would not say that it is even rational, never mind “appropriate,” to impose billions of dollars in economic costs in return for a few dollars in health or environmental benefits. In addition, “cost” includes more than the expense of complying with regulations; any disadvantage could be termed a cost.

Michigan v. EPA, 576 U.S. 743, 752 (2015).

That passage is 68 words, and its inner quotation marks stay double because nothing surrounds them. Stop after the second sentence and you have 49 words. Under the 50-word line those run into your sentence inside quotation marks, and the inner marks switch to single.

The Supreme Court’s own opinions can look different. In these two, the Court put quotation marks around the block and its citation inside the block, at the end. Decker v. Nw. Env’t Def. Ctr., 568 U.S. 597 (2013), sets off the Clean Water Act’s definition of “point source” that way, with “§ 1362(14).” on the block’s last line. Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez, 577 U.S. 153 (2016), does the same with a passage from Justice Kagan, printing the quotations inside it in single marks and ending with “Ibid.” Those are choices the Court made for its own opinions; a brief that follows the national form should not copy them.

Common mistakes
Quotation marks around a block in a brief that follows the national form.
The citation tucked inside the block, or indented with it.
A 30-word quotation set off as a block to make it stand out.
Single-spacing a block where your court’s rule does not allow it.

When does a quotation need to be a block quote, and where does the citation go?

The team’s answer

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