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Markdown Quote
Type any sentence, watch it become a proper markdown quote, and copy the exact blockquote syntax — with a live preview that shows what readers will see.
MD Viewer Team
This is a quote.
A markdown quote is the blockquote: a block of indented, visually separated text that writers use for citations, pull quotes, callouts, and excerpts. You create a markdown quote by putting a greater-than sign and a space at the start of a line: > Like this. The playground above renders that markdown quote instantly, so you can see the accent bar and indentation that readers get on GitHub, in documentation sites, and in most Markdown applications.
What makes markdown quote syntax confusing at first is that it borrows from email reply conventions rather than typography. One > starts a quote, > > nests a quote inside a quote, and a > on its own line splits your markdown quote into separate paragraphs. Because the marker is punctuation instead of a word like quote, the playground above matters: edit the example text and the preview re-renders on every keystroke, so you learn the mapping between markers and structure by watching it happen.
Everything on this page runs in your browser. There is no account and no upload — the markdown quote you type stays on your device. Use the example chips to switch between a single-line markdown quote and a multi-paragraph one, press Copy Markdown to grab the exact source, and read on for the full blockquote reference, nesting rules, common mistakes, and answers to the questions people ask about quoting in Markdown.
Markdown quote syntax reference
| You type | You get |
|---|---|
| > Text | A single-paragraph markdown quote with an accent bar |
| > A > > B | One markdown quote containing two paragraphs |
| > > Text | A nested markdown quote inside an outer quote |
| > - item | A bulleted list rendered inside the quote block |
| > **bold** | Markdown formatting works inside the quote |
| > # Heading | A heading that lives inside the quote block |
How to write a markdown quote
- 1
Start the line with > and a space
Type > followed by a space, then your sentence. That single marker is all a markdown quote needs — the renderer turns every line that begins with > into part of one blockquote.
- 2
Add paragraphs with a bare > line
Inside a markdown quote, a line containing only > separates paragraphs the same way a blank line does in normal text. The whole group still renders as one continuous quote block.
- 3
Nest with > > and mix in formatting
Stack markers to nest: > > creates a markdown quote inside a markdown quote. Lists, emphasis, code spans, and headings all keep working inside the quote, which is what makes blockquotes useful for callouts.
- 4
Copy and reuse
Press Copy Markdown in the playground to put the exact markdown quote source on your clipboard, ready to paste into a README, issue, or documentation file.
When to use a markdown quote (and when not to)
The markdown quote is the right tool for quoting a person, a document, or an earlier message: book excerpts, changelog highlights, warnings pulled from a spec, or a customer sentence you want to feature. Because a markdown quote is visually loud — indented, tinted, and barred — reserve it for text that deserves emphasis. A page where every other paragraph is a blockquote loses the signal entirely.
Two related pages on this site go deeper. The markdown block quote page focuses on multiline and nested quoting: stack overflow answers, legal citations, email threads. And if you need the quote inside a bigger document workflow, the md markup editor accepts the same syntax, previews it live, and downloads the result as .md, while the convert md to pdf page keeps the quote's indent and bar intact in the exported PDF.
Common markdown quote mistakes
"Text in quotation marks"
> Text in quotation marks
Plain quotation marks render as ordinary text. A markdown quote needs the greater-than marker; quotes only add typographic punctuation.
>first line second line
> first line > second line
A lazy continuation line without > is folded into the same paragraph, but multi-paragraph quotes break. Put > on every line of a robust markdown quote.
> Quote one > Quote two
> Quote one > > Quote two
A blank line between two > blocks creates two separate quotes with a gap. Use a lone > line to keep both paragraphs inside one markdown quote.
A markdown quote is not an HTML blockquote you style yourself
Some editors let you insert raw <blockquote> HTML. In Markdown that works, but it is heavier than the > marker and behaves inconsistently across renderers that filter HTML. The markdown quote syntax above is understood everywhere Markdown is — stick to > and your quote survives every renderer.
Frequently asked questions
Sources and spec citations
“A block quote marker consists of 0-3 spaces of initial indent, plus (a) a character > followed by a space, or (b) a single character > not followed by a space.”
“Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).”