A pull quote (also known as a lift-out quote) is a quote placed outside of the main flow of the article and is a very useful feature to attract the reader’s attention to a particular point and keep them reading your article. An example of a pull quote is shown at the bottom:
To use pull quotes in your own articles is incredibly simple:
- In the WordPress editor window, press the pull quote button (a red line and opening quotation mark:
). - Fill out the details in the popup window:
- Alignment: pull quotes can either stick to the left or right hand side of the article area.
- Quote: the actual text content of the quote. If you selected some text from your article, then clicked on the pull quote button, then this will automatically be filled in.
- Source Name: if this is an actual quote of another source, then put the name of whoever said it here. This may not be appropriate, eg: if the quote is just a highlighted part of your own article, in which case, leave it blank.
- Source Role: If you mentioned a source name, you may also wish to mention that source’s role within an organisation or their title, eg: Vice Chancellor of Southampton University.
- Click Insert into Post. Voila!
- This will add some strange-looking code (called shortags) into your article: don’t worry, this is ok. I’m working on a way to make this look friendlier.
- If you want to modify anything, then the quote itself is inbetween the two shortags. If you understand this code, then by all means, go ahead.
- If not, then delete everything it added (from the first square bracket to the last) and start again. If you make a big mess, ask me (online manager, Sam Whitehall) and I’ll sort it for you 🙂
- You can always see what the pull quotes look like in context by clicking on Preview.
