environmentsquoting
I would like to insert some literature quotations in my thesis. My first thought was to modify the verse environment as demonstrated in another question, though the result is not so pleasing.
I would like each quotation to be in quotation marks, provide an easy way to attribute the source below the quotation and be right aligned.
I did not use epigraph. I wrote my own version:
\usepackage{times}
\definecolor{quotationcolour}{HTML}{F0F0F0}
\definecolor{quotationmarkcolour}{HTML}{1F3F81}
% Double-line for start and end of epigraph.
\newcommand{\epiline}{\hrule \vskip -.2em \hrule}
% Massively humongous opening quotation mark.
\newcommand{\hugequote}{%
\fontsize{42}{48}\selectfont \color{quotationmarkcolour} \textbf{``}
\vskip -.5em
}
% Beautify quotations.
\newcommand{\epigraph}[2]{%
\bigskip
\begin{flushright}
\colorbox{quotationcolour}{%
\parbox{.60\textwidth}{%
\epiline \vskip 1em {\hugequote} \vskip -.5em
\parindent 2.2em
#1\begin{flushright}\textsc{#2}\end{flushright}
\epiline
}
}
\end{flushright}
\bigskip
}
The result:
If you use biblatex or multiple languages with babel or polyglossia, you can benefit from the integrated commands of csquotes. There are commands to quote in languages other than the main language so that the quoted text is typeset in accordance with the rules of the language. There are also commands to make formal quotes, both in the main language and in other languages, that gets the proper quotation marks from csquotes and a reference via biblatex.
If you use these commands rather than manually setting quotation marks, it may be easier to be consistent with quotations and hyphenation. Also, it can help you to be consistent with block quotes because csquotes has commands to make block quotes out of quotations that are longer than a certain threshold.
Here is an example of just a few of the available commands. You can read about the other commands in the manual.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[UKenglish,USenglish]{babel}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@book{nnt,
author = {N.N.},
title = {Title},
year = {2011}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\hyphenquote{UKenglish}{quote with UK English hyphenation}
\textcquote[1]{nnt}{formal quote}
\hyphentextcquote{UKenglish}[1]{nnt}{formal quote with UK English hyphenation}
\hyphenblockcquote{UKenglish}[1]{nnt}{A long formal quote with UK English hyphenation which happens to be longer than three lines and, thus, is typeset as a block quote. This text is just to make it long enough. This text is just to make it long enough. This text is just to make it long enough.}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
If you find it bothering to write the macros of csquotes you can use a snippet manager for the ones that you use often. For example, in my setup I write enq and press Tab which expands enq to enquote{} and places the cursor between the braces. See Replace the `$$ ... $$` macro with the `\[ ... \]` macros? - Prefer the way LaTeX lays it out, but `$` are faster to write for a more elaborate example of snippet managers.
If you use AUCTeX, it can be configured so that " expands to csquotes macros by inserting the following into your .emacs:
;; " expands into csquotes macros
(setq LaTeX-csquotes-close-quote "}"
LaTeX-csquotes-open-quote "\\enquote{")
Note that for this to work in conjunction with babel, babel must be loaded after csquotes.
Best Answer
If you’re using the KOMA-Script document classes, take a look at the
\dictumcommand in the documentation – this does exactly what you want.For example, to put a quotation in front of a chapter: