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The current draft (http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-blockquote-element) doesn't have any recommendations regarding insertion of quotation punctuation in the blockquote element. To be consistent with the proposal for the Q element (bug #7490), I'd suggest: [...] Content inside a blockquote must be quoted from another source, whose address, if it has one, should be cited in the cite attribute. [NEW]User agents MUST NOT insert quotation punctuation (such as quotation marks) into the rendering.[/NEW] I'd appreciate if any people who are more experienced than me would shape this text into something that is suited to go into a draft. See also http://www.w3.org/html/wg/tracker/issues/48 and http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/1328.html
Leif Halvard Silli added (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Sep/0211.html): I would suggest adding unless the default rendering is overridden by CSS so as to make it more congruent with what you said about <q>.
Why would we say anything about quotation punctuation around <blockquote>? Surely block quotes aren't normally quoted anyway? I mean, we also don't say that paragraph shouldn't be quoted, or that headings shouldn't have quotes, or that <kbd> elements shouldn't have "toxic waste" punctuation next to them. If you disagree, please reopen the bug and explain why you are asking for this, so that I have a better idea of how to fix it.