# Quoting in an unusual way... any clues why it doesn't do multiple paragraphs?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [13 augustus 2019 om 02:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620 "2019-08-13T02:30:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Cardinalflyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Cardinalflyer)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2019 om 02:30 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/1 "2019-08-13T02:30:16Z")
We are transitioning into our new community and need to pull a few messages from an old system in for a while. That involves quoting from external sources.
Luckily there is a nice [quote] system. We should be able to paste in the text, put a [quote=“name”] at the start of the text, [/quote] at the end and it should indent and label… and collapse! Very cool.
But it doesn’t seem to do that across paragraphs. It works within a normal reply as intended… reply to a post, click the cloud, multiple paragraphs are quoted nicely. But if I create a new topic, paste in several paragraphs and add quote ‘tags’ to front and back it does not render.
Putting quote tags around a single paragraph when externally pasted in _does_ work. So… what am I missing? Is there a trick to making this work?
I see the full, proper quote tag includes post, topic and full attributes. We’re not adding those… but if I do a quote the ‘normal’ way and delete those attributes is still works. Is there a clue there?
Also we are doing multiple quotes in a page… a bad thing?
Is there a way? Or am I hacking the tags and should just stop?
For now we are using the quote tags for the first paragraph, then \> for subsequent paragraphs.. clumsy. And it looks bad, to wit:
I know the flow isn’t quite normal, but my partner in this venture liked to quote in-stream in our past system so this works for him on these quotes we pull in…
Example: multiple paragraphs
Single paragraph. I only moved the /quote end tag:
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2019 om 02:43 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/2 "2019-08-13T02:43:46Z")
> [@Cardinalflyer](#):
>
> Luckily there is a nice [quote] system. We should be able to paste in the text, put a at the end and it should indent and label… and collapse! Very cool.
>
> But it doesn’t seem to do that across paragraphs. It works within a normal reply as intended… reply to a post, click the cloud, multiple paragraphs are quoted nicely. But if I create a new topic, paste in several paragraphs and add quote ‘tags’ to front and back it does not render.
I am confused, this seems to be working just fine here.
Don’t hack tags, just highlight the text you want to quote and click the quote button.
> [@Cardinalflyer](#):
>
> I know the flow isn’t quite normal, but my partner in this venture liked to quote in-stream in our past system so this works for him on these quotes we pull in…
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2019 om 02:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/3 "2019-08-13T02:49:43Z")
I think you need to put a newline after the quote like
```plaintext
[quote]
Text
Another paragraph
[/quote]
```
---
### Author:  [@Cardinalflyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Cardinalflyer)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2019 om 04:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/4 "2019-08-13T04:00:16Z")
Well, how about that! You nailed it, @pfaffman, and I thought I had tested that. It was the closing quote tag which needed the newline. Thanks!
---
### Author:  [@Cardinalflyer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Cardinalflyer)
#### Post date: [13 augustus 2019 om 22:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/5 "2019-08-13T22:32:23Z")
To add a bit more detail to this for future searchers, here’s what my testing showed about the [quote] tags when added manually, as when quoting text from outside Discourse:
1. If you are quoting a single paragraph, the start and stop tags can be in stream without linefeeds.
2. If quoting multiple paragraphs they must each be on a separate line from the text.
3. Start and stop tags must match… if the start tag is in-stream the end tag must also be in-stream.
Conclusion: if you always put the quote and unquote tags on a unique line it will work for single or multiple paragraph quotes.
---
### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [14 augustus 2019 om 05:21 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/6 "2019-08-14T05:21:13Z")
Alternatively select each block you want to quote and just press the `quote` which floats beside it. The selected text will be copied into the reply window with correctly formatted tags.
If you want to use multiple quotes you can repeat the process.
No need to copy and paste, each quote will be correctly formatted every time.
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [14 augustus 2019 om 12:46 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/7 "2019-08-14T12:46:00Z")
I think that he is quoting from an external source, hence all of the confusion.
---
### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [27 februari 2023 om 06:49 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/8 "2023-02-27T06:49:45Z")
---
### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [27 februari 2023 om 07:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/quoting-in-an-unusual-way-any-clues-why-it-doesnt-do-multiple-paragraphs/125620/9 "2023-02-27T07:05:30Z")