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Chicago Manual of Style Formatting Guide for Microsoft Word: Block Quotes

This guide provides a step by step overview of how to set up documents for Chicago style in Microsoft Word. The guide also reviews the tools available in Microsoft Word and how they might be useful in a student's paper.

How to Set Up Block Quotes in Microsoft Word

In Chicago style, block quotes are required when your quote consists of more than four lines of text. To format a block quote:


1. Click on the button above the scrolling bar on the right hand of the screen.

2. When the slider appears at the top of the page, click on the bottom part of the hourglass shape.

3. Slide it over to the next longer line.

 

4. Now that your block quote is indented, begin the quotation without quotation marks. Your footnote will come at the end of your quotation, AFTER the ending punctuation. Be sure to introduce your quote!

Example: 

Lutie notices the wall in the beginning of the novel while she is working for the Chandlers. She says:

It was, she discovered slowly, a very strange world that she had entered. With an entirely different set of values. It made her feel that she was looking through a hole in a wall at some enchanted garden, but she couldn’t get past the wall. The figures on the other side of it loomed up life-size and they could see her, but this little wall in between which prevented them from mingling on equal footing. The people on the other side knew less about her than she knew about them.¹


© 2017 by Lindsay Blanken & Jess Cornn