Quotations have roles, and a theme styles the role

Why

The look-names fail as polaroid did. SPEC-159 rejected comic and polaroid because a look name is "a specification wearing the costume of a name": a theme cannot render editorial differently without failing to do it. An editorial theme looks editorial by default; an author on a docs site should not be choosing it per quote.

plain exposed the problem. The composed testimonial needed its quote undecorated. Instead of the quote's role deciding that, the author (the composition) asked a decorated rune to remove its decoration, so the testimonial looks right only because of how Lumina happens to be styled.

> is not always a quotation, so the element is the wrong thing to style. recipe reads > as tips, comparison as callouts, conversation as dialogue, and event, organization and symbol accept it as body content. A theme that styles blockquote as a quotation puts a rule and a glyph on a recipe tip, and each of those runes undoes it.

The variety an editorial theme wants comes from elsewhere. A theme wanting different quotations in different parts of a page is a real need, and every case of it has a home that is not an author's look-name: where the quote sits (the region, the container, the reading register, which the theme already sees), what it is (a role, below), and how loud it is (a scale, prominence, D9). A remaining wish for pure variety is a composite intent (SPEC-159 Part 3), named for what the quote is to the reader and defined by a theme or a pack.

Decisions

D1 — four roles of quotation

The roles are the author's choice. What each looks like is the theme's.

D2 — decoration belongs to the theme; the look-names are withdrawn

• pullquote's variant is deprecated: default, accent and editorial name looks. It is accepted with a deprecation warning for a release, then removed.
  • editorial maps to nothing: on an editorial theme a featured quotation looks editorial already.
  • accent's tinted background is the universal tint, which every rune already takes; its extra size is loudness, which is prominence (D9).
• plain is withdrawn before it is released. It was added in v0.45.0 and is unpublished, so this is a changeset edit (as SPEC-182 D7 withdrew the testimonial codemod).
• align stays. It is placement, not decoration.
• A theme retunes a role; it does not redefine it (SPEC-159's bound). Every theme renders a featured quotation as a set-apart statement with its attribution; how it is set apart is its own.

D3 — a theme styles roles, not the blockquote element

1. Each role carries a marker, data-quote="quotation" | "featured" | "excerpt" | "epigraph", on the quotation's outermost element: the <figure> when it is attributed, the bare <blockquote> when it is not, the <aside> for an excerpt. A theme styles the role through it, with its blockquote and figcaption as descendants, and never guesses which wrapper holds it.
   • Its own attribute, one per vocabulary as data-reading, data-media and data-meta-type are. Not data-section, which names a part of a rune's own structure: a > in running text is part of none. Not a general content-role attribute: how text speaks (dialogue, lyrics, a caption; SPEC-159's voice role) is a different question from what kind of quotation it is, and keeping them apart lets one element carry both.
   • Independent of rune names. An epigraph comes from section's header grammar or the page start, a quotation from the core node, and a later composition may make a featured quotation without pullquote, so the theme contract names roles, not runes.
2. The quotation role comes from the core blockquote node. A plain > that no rune consumes has no rune to mark it, so the node emits data-quote="quotation".
3. A rune that reinterprets > produces its own elements and never carries the marker: tips, callouts and dialogue are not quotations, and no longer need to undo a quotation's style.
4. A composition does not style what it reinterprets; it places the rune that is that thing. A composed recipe's tips are notes, so its template places them in a hint (type="note", or a tip type if recipe's conversion shows one is needed), and the theme's hint treatment applies, as for any hint. The same holds for comparison's callouts. Neither keeps tip or callout CSS of its own once it is composed: that is the rule every composition already follows (SPEC-145 D2), stated here because > is where the temptation lies.
5. Lumina's global blockquote rule becomes its [data-quote="quotation"] rule. A blockquote with no marker (third-party content transformed outside refrakt's nodes) gets a minimal, unopinionated fallback at zero specificity, so it is never unstyled to the point of illegibility.
6. The reading register is context a theme may use. A quotation in prose and one in ui (a card body) may be styled differently: Lumina keeps its rule and glyph in prose and sets a quotation quieter in ui. The role is the same; the context differs (SPEC-108).

D4 — pullquote is the featured quotation; the excerpt is an option of it

One rune, because the two cases look the same and differ in how they are read. It keeps its name and gains quote as an alias, the name for its default case; renaming is not decided (open question 2).

• By default it is a featured quotation, read by assistive technology, as every current use of it (this site's examples quote other people) already is.
• excerpt marks a true pull quote: the words already appear in the text, so it renders as an <aside aria-hidden="true"> and a screen reader does not read the passage twice.
• Its structure is <figure><blockquote>…</blockquote><figcaption>…</figcaption></figure>. The authored blockquote's content is the <blockquote>'s; it is never nested in a second one. An attribution, when present, is the <figcaption>.
• It reads its attribution from a paragraph after the quote, **Name** — Source, with the item-model reading SPEC-182 gave compositions (D6 below).

D5 — an epigraph is recognised by position and attribution

A blockquote is an epigraph when both hold:

1. It stands in the epigraph position: after a section's headline (and its blurb, when there is one) and before the body; or at the very start of a page's content, or directly after its # title (many layouts take the title from frontmatter, so the content may have none).
2. It carries an attribution (D6), in either position.

Without an attribution it stays a quotation. That keeps the ordinary opening quotation from being misread: epigraphs almost always name their source, and requiring one is SPEC-182 D3's rule ("match only when the required parts are there") applied to position. No new rune.

• It is part of section's header grammar (ADR-046), as one more optional group after the blurb (SPEC-186 D1, D5). section reads its header from the content a composition places in it, so every rune composed over section reads epigraphs the same way: hero, cta, testimonial, and card once it is composed. That is the intended reach: reinterpretation means the same Markdown means the same thing in every rune. A card's epigraph need not look like an essay's; the theme styles the role by context (D3.6).
• The quote and its attribution are read as one unit, optional together and required within: a lone attribution after a headline is not an epigraph, and stays the blurb it is today.
• A heading inside a body does not open an epigraph. It is the extension most likely to misread ordinary content (a source quoted under a docs heading), and the cheapest to add later.
• A composition that never wants one sets the placed section's header="headline".

D6 — attribution is one shared part

Every role that carries a source reads it the same way and renders it the same way:

• Read from either of two positions, with one item model (**Name** required, then the source after a dash or comma, as SPEC-182 D6 fixed for testimonials):
  • after the quotation, a **Name** — Source paragraph directly following it. Read wherever a rune owns the sequence: pullquote, a composition's model, section's epigraph position. The quote and the attribution are one group (SPEC-186 D1), so an attribution is never read without a quote.
  • inside it, as the blockquote's last paragraph, — **Name**, Source: the leading dash marks it, so a quote ending in bold text is not misread. Read by a nested model on the blockquote field (SPEC-186 D2, D3), so it works in a composition as it does in a native rune, and by the core blockquote node, which gives a plain quotation an attribution with no rune.
  • The after form can ship first. It needs only SPEC-182's paragraph model and SPEC-186 D1; the inside form waits for SPEC-186 D2–D3.
• Rendered as <figcaption>, the name in <cite>.
• A quotation (role 1) with an attribution becomes a <figure>; without one it stays a bare <blockquote>.

D7 — the composed testimonial places a featured quotation

The staged testimonial places {% pullquote %} for its quote, with no variant: a testimonial's quote is a featured quotation, and its look in a card comes from the theme and the ui register, not from the composition. The testimonial keeps what is its own meaning: the rating, and the Review / Person / Rating schema.

The pullquote owns the attribution. It reads the **Name** — Role paragraph (D6) and renders the <figcaption>, so the testimonial no longer has a byline of its own:

• The testimonial's attribution field and its fills (SPEC-182 D6) go: the paragraph is the pullquote's content now, placed with the quote.
• Its byline meta block goes with them. The <figcaption> is the byline.
• Its schema reads the attribution from the pullquote: author and role resolve to the <figcaption>'s name and role nodes, as reviewBody already resolves to the pullquote's quote across the placed rune. The Review / Person graph is unchanged, which the SEO baseline checks.
• author and role stay declared on the testimonial for the attribute form (SPEC-182 D4), and fill the pullquote's attribution when written, so both forms render one <figcaption>.

This amends SPEC-182 D6: the paragraph reading it introduced is kept, and moves from the testimonial to the pullquote, where every role reads attribution the same way.

D8 — what happens to the interim fixes

• plain (#746, unreleased) is withdrawn under D2.
• The unwrap in #747 (no blockquote nested in a blockquote) is right and is folded into D4, where the root becomes <figure>, so pullquote's markup changes once rather than twice.

D9 — a featured quotation's loudness is its prominence

prominence scales a page-section header, and SPEC-183 made it a register for the whole header. A featured quotation is the centrepiece of its block in the same way, so it takes the same axis rather than a new one:

• The gate widens. The prominence facet applies to a rune with a header role, or one marked as a featured quotation or an excerpt (D3). On a plain quotation (role 1) it stays unavailable.
• The steps keep their meaning. quiet and normal are a quotation's own size, prominent and display a set-apart one, marquee a page's centrepiece. The theme maps each step to the quote's type size, as it maps them to a header's; Lumina ramps from the quote's resting size, as it ramps a title (WORK-538).
• accent's extra size (D2) is prominence="prominent".
• A testimonial's quote is normal in a card; a quote set as its own band is display or marquee.

Not in scope

• Callouts, tips and dialogue. They are not quotations (D3.3); their own runes style them.
• Inline quotations (<q>). A separate question.
• A theme other than Lumina. This spec sets the contract a second theme must meet; it does not write one.

Open questions

1. (Settled 2026-11-01: prominence, D9.)
2. Renaming. D4 adds quote as an alias. Whether quote later becomes the name and pullquote the alias is left until the alias has been in use.
3. (Settled 2026-11-01: section's header grammar, so every rune composed over it, and the page start; not headings inside a body. D5.)
4. (Settled 2026-11-01: the pullquote owns it, D7.)
5. (Settled 2026-11-01: data-quote with quotation | featured | excerpt | epigraph, on the outermost element, D3.1.)

Acceptance Criteria

• The core blockquote node marks a quotation data-quote="quotation"; runes that reinterpret > carry no marker
• Lumina styles the quotation role, not the bare element, with a minimal fallback for an unmarked blockquote, and a quieter quotation in the ui register
• pullquote renders <figure><blockquote>…</blockquote>[<figcaption>…</figcaption>]</figure>, never a nested blockquote, marked data-quote="featured"
• {% pullquote excerpt %} renders as <aside aria-hidden="true">, marked data-quote="excerpt"
• An attribution paragraph is read the same way for every role and rendered as <figcaption> with <cite>
• A blockquote after a page or section title with an attribution is an epigraph, data-quote="epigraph"; without an attribution it stays a quotation
• pullquote's variant warns as deprecated, and plain is withdrawn before release
• pullquote accepts the quote alias, and takes prominence (D9), which ramps the quote's size
• The staged testimonial places {% pullquote %} with no variant, the pullquote renders its attribution, and the testimonial's Review / Person graph is unchanged, read from the pullquote
• A composed rune that reinterprets > places the rune that is that thing (a hint for tips) and ships no style for it
• The theme-authoring docs list the four roles as part of the theme contract, and the pullquote and blockquote docs describe roles, not looks

References

• SPEC-159: intent, not look; "retune, don't redefine"; composite intents.
• SPEC-108: reading registers, the context D3.5 uses.
• SPEC-182: paragraph reading (D4, D6) and match-only-when-present (D5); D6 amended by D7.
• SPEC-145: D2, a composition has no style of its own (D3.4).
• SPEC-183: prominence as a register (D9).
• SPEC-186: the content-model constructs D5 and D6 are declared with: groups, nested models, position: last.
• ADR-046: header grammar by position (D5).
• ADR-030: variants are modifiers; semantics are rune-locked.