Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. They were the last people you’d expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn’t hold with such nonsense. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. If the quote is a continuation of the sentence that precedes it, you don’t need to add any extra punctuation. If the text preceding the block quote is a complete sentence, use a colon to introduce the quote.
A block quote must be introduced in your own words to show how it fits into your argument or analysis. Citation styleĮvery time you quote a source, it’s essential to show the reader exactly what purpose the quote serves. Some styles require block quote formatting based on the number of words, while others require it based on the number of lines.
The minimum length of a block quote varies between citation styles.