--- title: "Markdown blockquote attribution: three pandoc tests" slug: markdown-quote-attribution excerpt: "Quoted under Two hyphens before the name is the output pandoc gave for a name line in a quote that opens with two hyphens." quickAnswer: "Inputs and reader settings behind these runs appear in Four quote files and four reader settings. Two runs with smart on and two with it off are quoted under Two hyphens before the name, beside an od byte dump. One-hyphen output and spec line numbers for list markers fill A single hyphen starts a list. A file added just for this post is covered in Escaping the hyphen with a backslash. Raw tag output sits in A cite tag kept as raw HTML. Line numbers from the spec, with grep counts, are recorded in Attribution syntax in the spec. Numbered steps using pandoc, od and grep appear in Test a name line of your own." keyTakeaways: - "An od byte dump of pandoc's smart run is quoted under Two hyphens before the name." - "Under A single hyphen starts a list, one-hyphen output sits next to spec line numbers." - "A backslash test file added for this post is covered in Escaping the hyphen with a backslash." - "Four runs on a file holding a raw tag are quoted in A cite tag kept as raw HTML." - "Commands and counts for a quote file sit in Test a name line of your own." publishedDate: 2026-10-21 dateModified: 2026-10-21 author: Bobby Huang cluster: B role: post status: published faq: - q: Which name-line forms did this test try? a: "The four name-line inputs this test used are listed in Four quote files and four reader settings." - q: Where did my pair of hyphens go? a: "Under Two hyphens before the name, runs with smart on and off are quoted with the bytes pandoc wrote." - q: Why did the name become a bullet point? a: "The section A single hyphen starts a list quotes that output next to the spec lines for list markers." - q: Can I wrap the name in a cite tag? a: "Under A cite tag kept as raw HTML, pandoc's output for that input is quoted." related: - markdown-smart-quotes - markdown-block-quotes-nested-lists - raw-html-in-markdown --- A markdown blockquote attribution is the line under a quote that names the speaker. Typed three ways, one name line gave three results in this test. Two hyphens became one character or stayed put, depending on the reader setting. One hyphen started a list, and a raw `cite` element passed through as typed. One macOS machine ran each setting once, and its copy of pandoc carried version number 3.8.3. What follows is the text and markup pandoc produced, and no claim here reaches past it. ## Four quote files and four reader settings Running `grep -n '' qa.md qa-list.md qa-cite.md qa-esc.md` printed: ```text qa.md:1:> Ship the small fix first. qa.md:2:> qa.md:3:> -- Jane Doe qa-list.md:1:> Ship the small fix first. qa-list.md:2:> qa-list.md:3:> - Jane Doe qa-cite.md:1:> Ship the small fix first. qa-cite.md:2:> qa-cite.md:3:> Jane Doe qa-esc.md:1:> Ship the small fix first. qa-esc.md:2:> qa-esc.md:3:> \- Jane Doe ``` Lines 1 and 2 match across the four files. Line 3 is where they part ways: two hyphens and a space in `qa.md`, one hyphen and a space in `qa-list.md`, a `cite` element in `qa-cite.md`, and a backslash ahead of one hyphen in `qa-esc.md`. That last file came from an extra test written for this post. Each file went through `pandoc -t html` with four `-f` values: `markdown`, `markdown-smart`, `commonmark` and `commonmark+smart`. Filtering the extension lists printed `+smart` for the `markdown` reader and `-smart` for `commonmark`. So `smart` was on for two of the four settings, `markdown` and `commonmark+smart`, and off for the other two. ## Two hyphens before the name The command: ```sh pandoc -f markdown -t html qa.md ``` Output, ASCII-normalized. The text inside the third line's `

` element opens with one character, code point U+2013, shown here as `[U+2013]`: ```text

Ship the small fix first.

[U+2013] Jane Doe

``` Pandoc swapped the two hyphens for a single character. To find out which, this test sent the same conversion through `od`: ```sh pandoc -f markdown -t html qa.md | od -An -tx1 ``` Output: ```text 3c 62 6c 6f 63 6b 71 75 6f 74 65 3e 0a 3c 70 3e 53 68 69 70 20 74 68 65 20 73 6d 61 6c 6c 20 66 69 78 20 66 69 72 73 74 2e 3c 2f 70 3e 0a 3c 70 3e e2 80 93 20 4a 61 6e 65 20 44 6f 65 3c 2f 70 3e 0a 3c 2f 62 6c 6f 63 6b 71 75 6f 74 65 3e 0a ``` On the fourth row, right after `3e` (the `>` that closes the opening `p` tag), sit the three bytes `e2`, `80` and `93`. Decoded as UTF-8, those three bytes give code point U+2013. Next comes `20`, a space, and then `4a` for the J in Jane. The `commonmark+smart` run wrote the same third line. Both runs that had `smart` switched off, `markdown-smart` and `commonmark`, kept the hyphens as typed: ```html

Ship the small fix first.

-- Jane Doe

``` What the `smart` extension does to hyphens and dots in general is laid out in the dashes section of the [smart quotes walkthrough](markdown-smart-quotes.md). For a name line, the one fact this test needs from it is the swap: with `smart` on, two hyphens came out as U+2013 here. To keep the hyphen pair, the runs quoted here point to a reader setting with `smart` off. To get U+2013 instead, `markdown` and `commonmark+smart` each wrote it in this test. ## A single hyphen starts a list The file `qa-list.md` drops one of the two hyphens. Under all four settings, pandoc wrote: ```html

Ship the small fix first.

``` The name became the lone item of a bullet list, sitting inside the quote. Spec lines 3808-3809 (CommonMark 0.31.2) name `-` as one of three bullet list markers, and its list item rule on lines 3817-3822 builds an item from a marker followed by a space and some text. Lists and quotes placed inside one another follow their own rules, which the [nesting walkthrough for quotes and lists](markdown-block-quotes-nested-lists.md) covers. ## Escaping the hyphen with a backslash The extra file `qa-esc.md` keeps one hyphen and sets a backslash in front. Under all four settings, pandoc wrote: ```html

Ship the small fix first.

- Jane Doe

``` The backslash dropped out of the output, the hyphen stayed as plain text, and the name stayed in a paragraph. Counting list item tags in the written files backs this up. Under `markdown`, `grep -c '
  • '` printed `1` for the `qa-list.md` output and `0` for the `qa-esc.md` output. So a hyphen you want kept as text, with no list, came through here once a backslash sat before it. ## A cite tag kept as raw HTML The file `qa-cite.md` types the name inside a `` element. Under all four settings, pandoc wrote: ```html

    Ship the small fix first.

    Jane Doe

    ``` Apart from the `p` element around it, nothing on that line changed. The tag and the name passed through untouched, and `smart` made no change to them in either state. For raw tags in Markdown more broadly, see the [guide to HTML typed into Markdown](raw-html-in-markdown.md). ## Attribution syntax in the spec The `>` that opens each line of the four test files is the block quote marker defined on spec lines 3416-3420. This test found no attribution syntax in the spec. Run on the spec file, `grep -ci -F` for `attribution` matched 1 line, line 13, and that line belongs to the license notice. For `cite`, that search matched 0 lines. The term `block quote`, kept as a control, came back with 57 lines. ## Test a name line of your own These commands back the steps below, and each one ran in this test: ```sh grep -n '' qa.md qa-list.md qa-cite.md qa-esc.md od -An -tx1 qa.md pandoc -f markdown -t html qa-list.md -o qa-list.html grep -c '
  • ' qa-list.html pandoc -f markdown -t html qa-esc.md -o qa-esc.html grep -c '
  • ' qa-esc.html pandoc -f commonmark -t html qa.md -o qa.html grep -c -- '--' qa.html pandoc -f markdown -t html qa.md -o qa.html grep -c -- '--' qa.html pandoc -f markdown -t html qa.md | od -An -tx1 ``` When a quote's name line came out wrong, try these six steps. 1. Print the quoted lines with numbers. The `grep -n ''` command listed line 3 of each file, as quoted under Four quote files and four reader settings. 2. Read the source bytes on the name line. Running `od` on `qa.md` showed `2d 2d 20` just before `4a`: two hyphens and a space, then the J. 3. Count list items in the HTML. For the `qa-list.md` output, `grep -c '
  • '` printed `1`, and on the `qa-esc.md` output it printed `0`. 4. Count hyphen pairs left in the HTML. After the `commonmark` run on `qa.md`, the `--` count was `1`. After the `markdown` run on that file, it was `0`. 5. Check the bytes pandoc wrote. The last command showed `e2 80 93` where the two hyphens had been. 6. Pick the form for your name line. Two hyphens gave U+2013 with `smart` on and `--` with it off in this test. A backslash before one hyphen kept the name in a paragraph, and a `cite` element passed through as typed. ## Where Sashmark fits Suppose Sashmark's v1 turns out as mapped. A reader could then retouch a phrase while viewing the formatted text, and a planned piece called clean Round-Trip would store every line nobody touched with its bytes intact. Mapped for that version as well: a Changes View that could signal each revision since the reader's earlier pass, with no git step. It is in development and has not been released. The app itself has no AI features. See the [planned features](/features), the [help pages](/help) and the [roadmap](/roadmap) for where each part stands. More at [sashmark.com](https://www.sashmark.com/).