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I need to include block quotes in my thesis, and the line following should not be indented. I am using the memoir class with XeLaTeX.

For example the following code:

\begin{quote}
Lorem Ipsum Dolor
\end{quote}

The quote above \\ means...

Tyepsets like this:

  Lorem Ipsum Dolor

  The quote above 
means

And I want it to typeset like this:

  Lorem Ipsum Dolor

The quote above
means

I realize that I could start every paragraph after \end{quote} with \noindent, but there must be an easier, automatic way.

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1
  • 3
    Don't leave a blank line after \end{quote} (or comment out the blank line).
    – Gonzalo Medina
    Sep 4, 2011 at 21:19

2 Answers 2

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13

As Gonzalo said, "[d]on't leave a blank line after \end{quote} (or comment out the blank line)". However, by removing the indentation from the following "paragraph", you are in fact denoting that the paragraph which includes the quote environment is continued -- which may or may not be the case. Text quotes may constitute a paragraph of their own, they may close a more substantial paragraph, and they may even be positioned in the midst of such a paragraph. Only in the last case is it appropriate to remove the indentation after the quote environment.

Shameless plug: My quoting package provides the quoting environment which also allows to control first-line indentation by adding/removing a blank line before the environment.

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  • 1
    The paragraph following the block quote is by no means the continuation of the quote. It is similar to the first paragraph after a heading: it is a new paragraph but does not need to be indented. By removing the blank line, I get many orphan and widow issues (which is logical as Tex does not see that it is a new paragraph).
    – Tom de Bruin
    Sep 6, 2011 at 5:57
  • Well, I disagree. :-) Text after headings always starts a new paragraph; text after quotes (like text after dispayed equations) may yor may not start a new paragraph. As for orphans, my quoting package includes a mechanism to avoid them.
    – lockstep
    Sep 6, 2011 at 6:03
  • I meant in my specific case. In general both cases are possible, but most of my blockquotes are to be construed as a separate paragraph.
    – Tom de Bruin
    Sep 6, 2011 at 8:01
9

The correct way it as mentioned by others is to not leave a blank line. However, if you want to enforce this as a style for your entire document, then you could use something as below which forces the line following to not be indented (independent of if you leave a blank line or not).

This use the \@doendeq from Command for paragraph indentation after equations

\RequirePackage{etoolbox}
\documentclass{memoir}

\makeatletter
\newcommand*{\@doendeq}{%
  \everypar{{\setbox\z@\lastbox}\everypar{}}%
}

\newenvironment{MyQuote}{%
    \begin{quote}%
}{%
    \end{quote}\ignorespacesafterend\par\noindent\aftergroup\@doendeq%
}%
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\begin{MyQuote}
Lorem Ipsum Dolor (with blank lines following)
\end{MyQuote}

The quote above \\ means...

\begin{MyQuote}
Lorem Ipsum Dolor (without blank lines following)
\end{MyQuote}
%
The quote above \\ means...

\end{document}
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2
  • Thanks for this one! :-) Been looking for this for a while. This is my preferred style for environments that are never in the middle of a paragraph. I'm patching them with \AfterEndEnvironment from the etoolbox package.
    – mhelvens
    Oct 19, 2012 at 0:48
  • Thanks a lot. I was just having this problem in a memoir document, with \chapterprecis forcing an indent of the chapter's first paragraph.
    – Damien Pollet
    Mar 7, 2013 at 17:41

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