USFM for block quotes

Question

For long quotations (both of Scripture from other locations and from external resources), we’d like to set the quote apart using block quotes–so having the whole quote have slightly narrower margins on both the right and the left.

Is the proper USFM marker to do that \pm, or \mi?

Is there a better source of information on how to use USFM than this site? I find that documentation extremely sparse and it rarely answers my questions.

Is there a better forum to ask these sorts of questions (or search for answers to previous questions) than this PT forum?

Finally, is there a reason there isn’t a \ipm or an \imi marker? Is \ipq the equivalent?

Answer 1

As I understand your description (blockquote as part of a non scripture text section), I would recommend using \imq or \ipq.

Comments

Thank you both.

I think I now know how our projects will style these sorts of things.

I’ve also realized that my true question wasn’t regarding these specific issues. Rather it was: “If USFM is a standard, how do I determine which is the correct marker to use in a given circumstance.”

CrazyRocky’s mention of NIV was helpful in answering this, because it lead me to downloading 10 or 15 different major resources and comparing them. What I found is that there is a shockingly large amount of variance in which markers are used–sometimes within the same project!

My conclusion from that, along with reading the USFM documentation, is that USFM is only a standard in that it limits the number of markers which ought to be used. And in many cases it gives general suggestions for how those markers ought to be used. But it’s not a standard in the way I was originally thinking, as it doesn’t really list exact circumstances when a marker should (and shouldn’t) be used. It seems like it just throws out a group of markers and, with some limitations, says “use these as you see fit”.

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Please keep in mind, that the USFM standard has added new markers in the last years. You may not find these in the major resources, because they were created earlier than the new markers.

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Just to be clear(er)? USFM is just that a set of Unified Standard Format Markers. What provides the control of what markers are allowed in a text and where they can occur is the style sheet. In Paratext this is the usfm.sty sheet along with a custom.sty or frtbak.sty (for front and back matter). These style sheets set rules for where certain markers can or can’t occur and whether or not they require closing markers. Then Paratext uses this information to display markers in red if they are incorrect. Some projects have markers that are not part of the standard or are used differently because they have added them to a custom.sty file this should be used very carefully.
It is important to note that while you can put any marker anywhere in Paratext, certain outputs may fail if they are not formatted correctly. In particular, the DBL requires that markers pass the marker check of Paratext.

The style sheet tries to help identify the correct marker for a given situation through the marker dialog that pops up if you are in Standard view. When you press Enter the window displays paragraph type markers that could occur in that location. If you press the backslash () then it will display character style markers that can occur.
As you have noted there is wide variety as to what different teams use, but it can be helpful to look at other resources in standard view to see how they have marked things.

Answer 2

The NIV uses \pm for long quotes that the translators want to indent in 2SA 7:5-17; 1KI 8:15–9:9 and JHN 17:1-26. If the translators want to indent the quote for the same reason but without a first line indent use \mi. There is one example in the NIV: REV 16:15.
Another option is \pi1. In the NIV we format the dictated letters to the churches in REV 2–3 using \pi1. this is because although they are formatted like \pm, continuer quotes are suspended for the duration of each letter.