Blockquotes, multiple paragraphs in footnotes

I’m looking to accomplish a couple things inside auto-generated [footnote] tags in PDF exports. Lots of examples incoming! In these tags, I need to…

  • Utilize a <blockquote> tag (or, something similar that will mimic a blockquote’s formatting)
  • Delineate multiple paragraphs within a blockquote

I’m working on a straightforward, traditional monograph, exporting in Austen. There are a number of instances in the monograph where a footnote requires blockquotes. Here’s a screencap of an example footnote from an older iteration of the book (this is not the PB export, but what I need to achieve):

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When attempting to wrap the blockquote (“[. . . ] In Corsica…”), in a <blockquote> tag, the export pops it both the quote and the following paragraph into the main body text:

[footnote]Another cultural practice of shaming is described by Jon Elster in <em>Strong Feelings</em>, pp. 100–101: In nineteenth-century Corsica, contempt for the person who failed to abide by the norms of vengeance was expressed by the <em>rimbecco</em>, “a deliberate reminder of the unfulfilled revenge. It could take the form of a song, a remark, a gesture or a look, and be delivered by relatives, neighbors or strangers, men or women. It was a direct accusation of cowardice and dereliction”: <blockquote>[. . .] In Corsica, the man who has not avenged his father, an assassinated relative or a deceived daughter can no longer appear in public. Nobody speaks to him; he has to remain silent. If he raises his voice to emit an opinion, people will say to him: “avenge yourself first, and then you can state your point of view.” The <em>rimbecco</em> can occur at any moment and under any guise. It does not even need to express itself in words: an ironical smile, a contemptuous turning away of the head, a certain condescending look – there are a thousand small insults which at all times of the day remind the unhappy victim of how much he has fallen in the esteem of his compatriots. [Quoted from S. Wilson, <em>Feuding, Conflict, and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica</em> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 203.] </blockquote> Elster interprets this practice as inducing shame in its victim by expressing the community’s contempt. The practice does express contempt, of course, but it also conveys the victim’s loss of credentials as a self-presenter. His every attempt to present himself to others is met with a reminder that their knowledge of his situation has rendered them deaf and blind to anything else about him.[/footnote]

Any tips on how I can delineate both blockquotes and new paras inside the footnote tags?

Hi Amanda, great question. This is a known issue – it has to do with a shortcode (blockquote) within another shortcode (footnote). We’re working on nested shortcodes right now (see Shortcode within shortcode testing for 3 specific situations · Issue #1826 · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub) and hope to have some ideas about how this might work in the near future. We’ll keep you posted!

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Thanks so much @SteelWagstaff! Do you happen to know of any sneaky workarounds that might help, even just mimicking the look of a blockquote? We’d like to get this book finished within the month, if possible.

Your best bet is probably mailing premium support on this one, Amanda. We monitor this open source forum and try to be helpful, but you’ll get quicker responses from that email account as an EDU client.

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Was a solution implemented for this (quotes inside footnotes and paragraphs inside footnotes)? I cannot find any way of doing this but need to be able to do this for a traditional monograph, like the original poster.

Hi Justin – to clarify, you’re trying to put block quotes and paragraphs within a footnote? What happens when you attempt to do this now in Pressbooks? Screenshots and link to sample book will be most helpful for folks in the forum trying to help you come up with a solution.

Thanks. I’ve actually sorted out the blockquotes in footnotes - I just needed to be more careful about formating material that I’d cut and pasted from ODT.

However, I still cannot work out how to have more than one paragraph in a footnote. Some of my footnotes are very long and need two or three paragraphs for ease of comprehension. I tried to break a footnote into two paragraphs by using return. Return works in the main text to create a new paragraph but clearly does nothing in a footnote.

Here is the visual version, after I have put in the break, so the new paragraph would start: Apuleius’ novel …

Here is the text version:

Here is what the export pdf looks like. As you can see, no new paragraph.

Hi @Justin_Meggitt – yes I see. I thought we implemented a fix for this in 2020: Release Pressbooks 5.15.3 · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub but it appears not to be working as expected here. Perhaps I can check with our lead developer next week after he returns from vacation.

Thanks. Much appreciated. I’m using the theme Graham, if that makes any difference.

Any news on this yet? Thanks.