Quoting in LaTeX

Quotes have always been a little confusing in LaTeX. First there are two different environments for single (quotation) and multiple (quote) quotations. Second, the environments cannot be parametrized. Last but not least, both environments have some glitches.

Thomas Titz introduced a new package called quoting that addresses these problems by being parameterizable. For example, you can set the font and formatting options in the package declaration and you can even specify beginning and ending strings for the quotes, resulting in guaranteed typographic consistency across your document.

The package being new, it still has some shortcomings. For example, you might want to use dingbats for the begin and end texts, but quoting does not yet allow commands as values in the parameter lists, so you have to set them in every quote.

Example:

\usepackage{pifont}

\usepackage[font={itshape,raggedleft}]{quoting}

…

\begin{quoting}

\ding{125}Here and now, as always and everywhere, invention is the mother of necessity\ding{126}

end{quoting}

Before you try this, you may want to update your installation with TeX Live Utility, because the current version is from a couple of weeks ago.