How to Format a Block Quote in APA, MLA, and Chicago

Quick Answer: when and how to block a quotation

Count first, then format. APA counts words. MLA counts lines as they fall in your typed paper, not in the source — and the Style Center says to measure that length in a readable 12-point typeface. Chicago gives a word count and a structural trigger. In every style the block starts on a new line, is indented 0.5 in from the left, carries no quotation marks around the extract, and is followed by the citation after the final period. Whether the block is double- or single-spaced depends on the style and, for Chicago, on whether you are writing a Turabian student paper or a manuscript for a publisher.

Introducing sentence ending in a colon:

     Quoted text of 40 or more words, indented 0.5 in, double-spaced, no quotation marks, ending with its own period. (Author, Year, p. Page)

Author (Year) put it this way:

     Quoted text of 40 or more words. (p. Page)

Introducing sentence ending in a colon:

     Quoted prose of more than four lines, indented 0.5 in, double-spaced, no quotation marks. (Author Page)

Introducing sentence ending in a colon:

     Quoted prose of about 100 words or more, or two or more paragraphs, indented 0.5 in, no quotation marks.1

     Quoted prose, same layout. (Author Year, Page)

Count before you format

The threshold is the only part of the rule that changes what the page looks like, so settle it first. The same 63-word passage is a block in APA, a block in MLA once it spills past four lines in your paper, and a run-in quotation in Chicago unless it contains a paragraph break or your instructor follows Turabian's five-line rule. Do not invent a fourth threshold of your own because the extract "looks long."

The worked examples below are official reprints or identifiable public-domain passages. They replace the invented Farrow / Marlowe pair that used to sit on this page. Official wording is marked as a quotation so translations keep it in English.

APA 7: 40 words, half an inch, citation after the period

Section 8.27 of the Publication Manual (7th ed.) sets the APA form. The Alamo Colleges reprint (last updated 29 May 2026) restates the official list: start the quotation on a new line; indent the whole block 0.5 in from the left margin; double-space it; do not add extra space before or after it; do not add quotation marks; indent the first line of each later paragraph an additional 0.5 in; then place the citation after the final punctuation, with no period after the closing parenthesis.

The official parenthetical example is Ben Alderson-Day and Charles Fernyhough's 2015 Psychological Bulletin review. University reprints of Publication Manual §8.27 (Alamo, Augusta, Edgewood, Miami Dade) print the same 57-word extract and the same locator, p. 957. The paper is real: doi:10.1037/bul0000021.

Researchers have studied how people talk to themselves:

     Inner speech is a paradoxical phenomenon. It is an experience that is central to many people's everyday lives, and yet it presents considerable challenges to any effort to study it scientifically. Nevertheless, a wide range of methodologies and approaches have combined to shed light on the subjective experience of inner speech and its cognitive and neural underpinnings. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957)

Narrative citation: name and year before, page after

If the author and year appear in the sentence that introduces the block, do not repeat them afterwards. Only the page number goes in parentheses after the final punctuation. That is the same parenthetical versus narrative split that applies to short quotations; the block merely moves the locator to the end. The official narrative example in §8.27 is Flores et al. (2018), Journal of Counseling Psychology 65(3), 308–323, doi:10.1037/cou0000279.

Flores et al. (2018) described how they addressed potential researcher bias when working with an intersectional community of transgender people of color:

     Everyone on the research team belonged to a stigmatized group but also held privileged identities. Throughout the research process, we attended to the ways in which our privileged and oppressed identities may have influenced the research process, findings, and presentation of results. (p. 311)

Sources without page numbers

A block quotation from a webpage, an e-book without fixed pages, or a transcript still needs a locator. APA's quotations without page numbers rule (Publication Manual §8.28) accepts a paragraph number, a heading or section name, a heading plus a paragraph count, or a timestamp for audiovisual works. Chapter numbers are allowed for e-books. Do not invent page numbers from a PDF viewer's counter. The official short-quotation locator example on the same Alamo page is a heading plus a paragraph:

Short quotations still use marks and put the period last

The block rule does not apply under 40 words. Alamo reprints the official short example: quotation marks stay on, and the sentence period comes after the closing parenthesis — the reverse of the block.

MLA 9: four lines of prose, three of verse

MLA Handbook 9th edition §§6.34–6.35 measure the quotation in the lines of your own paper. Prose that would occupy more than four lines is blocked; verse of more than three lines is blocked (§6.38). Indent the block 0.5 in from the left margin, keep it double-spaced, and do not add quotation marks. The Style Center (15 July 2020) adds that every block in the paper should be indented the same amount, even when it follows a one-line introduction. The parenthetical citation goes after the final punctuation, with no period after it. MLA has no year in the citation, so the author-page form is all you add.

The Style Center's own worked example quotes Simon Gikandi on Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o. The extract is real (Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Cambridge UP, 2000, ACLS Humanities E-book).

For Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o,

     African writers are haunted by their past simply because the historical narratives that they thought would make their experiences more intelligible have instead confronted them with the opacity of the past. The turn to fiction, then, is one important way of clarifying the confusions created by historical events. . . . (Gikandi 3)

Why the period moves after a block

The Style Center (29 February 2016) explains the punctuation with a Mrs. Dalloway pair. In a run-in quotation the writer's sentence ends after the parenthesis, so Woolf's period is dropped as redundant. In a block, Woolf's period stays, the citation follows it, and nothing follows the parenthesis. The quoted sentences are Virginia Woolf's.

Virginia Woolf describes the scene vividly:

     Everything had come to a standstill. The throb of the motor engines sounded like a pulse irregularly drumming through an entire body. The sun became extraordinarily hot because the motor car had stopped outside Mulberry's shop window; old ladies on the tops of omnibuses spread their black parasols; here a green, here a red parasol opened with a little pop. Mrs. Dalloway, coming to the window with her arms full of sweet peas, looked out with her little pink face pursed in enquiry. (14)

Verse: keep the line breaks

Up to three lines of poetry stay in your sentence, separated by a slash with a space on each side; a double slash marks a stanza break. From the fourth line, block the quotation and reproduce the poem's own line breaks and, as far as you can, its indentation. Cite by line number rather than page when the copy prints line numbers, writing line or lines in the first citation; later citations can give the numbers alone. If the parenthetical does not fit on the last line of verse, put it on the next line, flush with the right margin. The Style Center covers eliding lines, stanza space, and which number to cite. This page is the extract's layout. The works-cited decision for a poem lives in how to cite a poem in MLA.

Hemans opens on the imprint and then on ruins:

     Thou thing of years departed!
     What ages have gone by,
     Since here the mournful seal was set
     By love and agony!

     Temple and tower have mouldered,
     Empires from earth have passed
     And woman's heart hath left a trace
     Those glories to outlast! (lines 1–8)

More than one paragraph

When a block quotation contains a paragraph break, MLA indents the first line of each paragraph after the first an additional 0.25 in. The first line of the block itself is never indented further, even if it began a paragraph in the source. The Style Center (12 September 2019) confirms that the extra indent applies even when the source marks paragraphs with blank lines instead of indents. Dialogue between two or more speakers is blocked the same way, with each speaker's turn starting a new indented paragraph.

Chicago 18: about 100 words, or two paragraphs

CMOS 18 chapter 12 treats the block as a judgement call guided by length. UVU's Chicago and Turabian handout cites C 12.9–10, 12.22–24, and 12.81 for the extract and T 25.2.2 for the student form: prose of a hundred words or more, or two or more paragraphs, should be blocked; quoted letters with salutations and lists are blocked whatever their length. Turabian 9 hardens the everyday student rule to five or more lines. Either way the block is indented 0.5 in from the left margin, takes no quotation marks, and is cited after its final punctuation: by a superscript note number in notes-bibliography style, or by an author-date parenthetical in the author-date system. CMOS 18 no longer requires a place of publication in most book notes (see 14.30 and the Notes-Bibliography Quick Guide).

The 100-word example below is the opening of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, the public-domain book the CMOS Quick Guide already cites (New York, 1851; Melville Electronic Library). Because a Project Gutenberg or side-by-side reading text does not give a stable 1851 page for chapter 1, the note cites the chapter, which is what CMOS 14.58–62 tells you to do when fixed pages are missing.

Ishmael treats the voyage as a cure:

     Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship.1

The city itself is drawn seaward:

     There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward.
          Circumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears Hook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What do you see?—Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand thousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries.2

     . . . I quietly take to the ship. (Melville 1851, chap. 1)

When the source has already been identified in a note or in the sentence that introduces the block, notes-bibliography style also allows a bare page or chapter reference in parentheses after the block, (chap. 1), instead of another note number. The first line of a Chicago block is not indented further; paragraphs after the first are marked by an extra first-line indent, as above, or by a blank line between paragraphs. Pick one method and keep it. UVU's wording: block quotes are indented from the left, generally by 0.5 inches, "with no extra first-line paragraph indent" on the opening line.

Single- or double-spaced?

This is where Chicago papers differ from APA and MLA papers. Turabian 9 §25.2.2 and appendix A single-space block quotations and leave a blank line before and after the block, so a student paper following Turabian shows the quotation as a visibly denser paragraph. A manuscript prepared for a publisher follows CMOS chapter 2 and the publisher's own instructions, which usually means double-spacing throughout so that editors can mark the text. UVU states the split outright: "For student papers, Turabian recommends single-spaced footnotes, endnotes, block quotes, and reference lists. Professional publications may adhere to different Chicago formatting guidelines." If an instructor says to double-space everything, that instruction wins. What does not change is the indent, the missing quotation marks, and the citation after the final punctuation.

Verse in Chicago

Two or more lines of poetry are normally blocked, with the poem's own line breaks and indentation preserved; the block is either indented like prose or, in typeset work, centered on its longest line. A single line, or two lines you deliberately want inside the sentence, can be run in with a slash surrounded by spaces. Cite line numbers only when the edition prints them; otherwise cite the page. An omitted line inside a blocked poem is shown by a row of spaced periods roughly as long as a line of the poem. The Hemans stanza already verified on the MLA Style Center can be restyled as a Chicago note without inventing a new poem.

     Thou thing of years departed!
     What ages have gone by,
     Since here the mournful seal was set
     By love and agony!4

Introducing the block: colon, comma, or nothing

The punctuation before a block quotation is decided by grammar, not by a special block-quote mark, and the three styles agree. A complete sentence that announces the quotation ends in a colon. An introduction that flows grammatically into the quoted words takes a comma after a verb of saying, or no punctuation at all when the quotation completes your own clause. Do not put a colon after that or argues that; the clause is unfinished and the colon breaks it. CMOS 12.14 treats the comma after said as convention rather than logic; APA and MLA give the same three-way choice.

When the quotation continues your clause, APA and Chicago let you change the first letter of the quoted text to lowercase without brackets. Every other change to the wording has to be marked, which is what the next section covers.

Omitting and changing words

Long quotations are where writers most often cut. All three styles mark an omission inside a quotation with an ellipsis and mark an insertion with square brackets. The differences are in how the ellipsis is typed and how a dropped sentence boundary is shown. APA's changes to quotations page (Publication Manual §§8.30–8.31) and the MLA Style Center's styling ellipses post are the authorities for the first two; Chicago's ellipsis rules are CMOS 18 §§12.59–69.

Quotation marks inside a block quotation

Because the block has no quotation marks of its own, anything the source itself put in quotation marks keeps double quotation marks inside the block. This is the reverse of a run-in quotation, where the inner quotation drops to single marks (APA 7 §8.33; MLA 9 and CMOS use the same logic). It is the rule most often broken by writers who convert a run-in quotation into a block without re-checking the inner marks. The quotation mark converter switches a passage between the two forms. The official APA run-in inner-quote example is Bliese, Edwards, and Sonnentag (2017, p. 391) in Journal of Applied Psychology; Jönköping's reprint matches the article. The blocked rewrite below is the same wording with the inner marks restored to doubles, labelled as a layout demonstration rather than a second official extract.

Bliese et al. (2017) noted the reach of the phone:

     Mobile devices enabled employees in many jobs to work "anywhere, anytime" and stay electronically tethered to work outside formal working hours. (p. 391)

Some university reprints of the official sentence misspell enabled as enameled. The wording above follows the published article (Bliese et al., 2017, p. 391) and the Jönköping reprint. If you cannot verify an inner quotation, keep the run-in official example and do not invent a longer block around it.

What this page is not

Three siblings answer different questions. Paraphrasing vs. quoting decides whether the extract should exist. How to cite a poem in MLA builds the works-cited entry and chooses line numbers versus pages. How to format an academic paper sets margins, typeface, and heading levels for the whole document. This URL is only the extract: threshold, indent, spacing, inner marks, and where the citation sits. Keep the four pages from collapsing into one another.

Side-by-side summary

Common mistakes

• Wrapping the block in quotation marks. The indent is the signal; the marks are redundant and wrong in all three styles.
• Putting the citation before the final period, as you would for a run-in quotation. After a block the period comes first and the parenthesis or note number follows it.
• Adding a period after the closing parenthesis. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957). is a common error; nothing follows the parenthesis.
• Blocking a 35-word APA quotation because it looks long, or running in a 45-word one because it looks short. APA counts words, so count them.
• Measuring MLA's four lines in the source instead of in your own 12-point paper.
• Blocking every long quotation in a Chicago paper and never checking whether the instructor follows Turabian's five-line rule or CMOS's hundred-word rule of thumb.
• Indenting the first line of the block an extra amount, as if it were a paragraph. Only the second and later paragraphs get the extra indent.
• Leaving single quotation marks inside a block that was pasted from a run-in draft.
• Using the word processor's unspaced ellipsis in MLA, which wants three spaced periods.
• Starting a block quotation with an ellipsis. Begin at the first word you keep; readers know a quotation is an excerpt.
• Forgetting that a block quotation is still a quotation: it needs a locator, and it needs an entry in the reference list, works-cited list, or bibliography.
• Inventing a book, poem, or page so one fake passage can be shown in three styles. Use an official extract or a labelled template.

Related guides and official manuals

• Paraphrasing vs. Quoting
• How to Format an Academic Paper
• How to Cite a Poem in MLA
• How to Cite the Same Source Multiple Times
• How to Avoid Plagiarism
• Do You Need a Page Number When Paraphrasing?
• APA in-text citations
• MLA in-text citations
• Chicago in-text citations and notes
• APA Style: quotations
• APA Style: changes to quotations
• APA Style: quotations without page numbers
• Alamo Colleges: APA quotations (29 May 2026 reprint)
• MLA Style Center: how to indent block quotations
• MLA Style Center: paragraphs in block quotations
• MLA Style Center: run-in versus block period
• MLA Style Center: styling ellipses
• MLA Style Center: stanza space in quoted poetry
• Chicago Notes-Bibliography citation guide
• Chicago Author-Date citation guide
• UVU: Chicago and Turabian 18th-edition handout