blockquotes

You may be aware that I have tried in the past to alter the look of this site via CSS and found that with the Basic Plan that I have, that is not possible. One of the things I wanted to do was to somehow make blockquotes stand out better… that is distinguish the blockquote from text I had. I was hoping that changing to the Plus account might accomplish this, but being unsure, I sent a note to Typepad.

Got a response the same day (today). No, the plus account won’t allow me to do that, but the Pro account will. However, the suggestion was made that I could make each blockquote the way I want, but it would be tedious. Alas, here was an answer that worked. I use MarsEdit much of the time to write my entries. MarsEdit allows you to define you own custom tags. So, I now have a solution, of sorts, for the blockquote dilemma, and I can add a quote like this:

“Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.,” a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of “another success” in the Bush administration’s “drive to strengthen aviation security”; the reporter called it “one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history.” A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration’s determination to open markets for American farmers.

To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the federal government produced all three.

From today’s NY Times.

Here’s what the opening tag code looks like:

< blockquote style="font-style: italic; padding: 5px; background-color:#CCDEF0; border-left: solid 3px black;" >