Blockquote, q, cite, when to use it all?

[eglove]

I'm asking this question with the full recognition that the issue may be a little contentious and possibly unresolved, but I would like the opinions of those here anyway.

When I quote another article in mine I always use either blockquote or q. (q is an inline version of blockquote). But I recently learned you can add a cite attribution to those tags. Like so:

I have a dream...

or
<q cite="www.example.com">He who doesn't ask himself...</q>

But these links don't show up anywhere, only in the code. To be as ethical as possible, I also put in an anchor link. That also is my first concern. Can putting the same link twice essentially right next to one another cause issues?

To add to the complexity, I've also been researching the <cite>tag. And it's history is a little... well... rocky. It seems as though the current standard is to use either blockquote or q and then add in cite as a footer to it. Like this:</cite>

They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. It was considered as being bad enough to be a slave; but to be a poor man's slave was deemed a disgrace indeed!

<footer>Douglass, F. (1999). <cite>[The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass]([link to book (or article where appropriate)])</cite>. Oxford: Oxford University Press,</footer>

Notice the cite tag is only around the link to the item in question. Not the entire footer. Also note that the footer is inside the blockquote, thus it is not meant to be at the bottom of the page.

So IF this is the standard way to do things, it answers my first question. But is it? And can the use of the footer tag confuse search engines?

Ugh, crazy all over the place question, I know. But I'm struggling to find the right way to handle quotations in a way that is both academic, and SEO friendly. Start from the beginning if you must.

[eglove]

Took me awhile to find out what you were talking about with the Wikipedia page. As always it looks like Schema provides the flexibility and fine details to allow marking up everything. While I'm sure Wikipedia simple style works, I do like to be thorough. The whole point of building a static website is to play with every little detail.

Thanks a lot.

[KaneJamison]

I doubt you'll confuse search engines - and it shouldn't hurt you if you do - because I don't think they care. From a practical, non-academic standpoint, I think Google is likely to see a duplicate string of content that they've seen in the past, at the linked URL, contained within a blockquote, and handle it appropriately.

The main question I think is how to properly give value to the quoted site. I would keep linking separately from the cite="" attribute. That link is the clearest value and it's what the publisher of the content expects to see.

Whether you use the <cite>tag or cite="" attribute is up to you. If you do so, take a look at how Wikipedia handles it (without any</cite>

<footer>tag in this example), and I'd say that's probably a safe format to replicate. This is probably the closest to "academically correct" in the sense of citing sources.

Have you found anything useful in the official schema.org documentation, or threads like this one?

</footer>