Quotapart

Quotapart is a term used in digital publishing to describe a data model and related tooling for managing quoted material within a document. The core idea is to separate the content of a quotation from its surrounding narrative and to attach structured metadata for attribution, licensing, and provenance. In practice, quotapart can be realized as a markup extension, a JSON or XML interchange format, or as a set of CMS blocks that encode quote text, the author, source, page numbers, edition, and permission status.

Key elements include the quotation text, attribution fields, source references, and partition metadata that indicates where the quote appears in the source and how it should be displayed or formatted. The model supports multiple quotes in a single document, versioning of quotes, and localization of attribution strings.

Usage and implementations: Quotation management systems, citation tools, and some content management ecosystems have experimented with quotapart-like structures to improve reuse and licensing compliance. While not universally adopted, proponents argue that quotapart improves traceability of sources and simplifies styling and export to formats such as HTML, PDF, or e-learning packages. Critics point to potential complexity and overlap with existing standards for citations and quotations.

History: The term originated in online publishing discussions in the early 2020s and has appeared in speculative proposals and tutorials. There is no single, widely adopted specification as of the latest edition of this article.