sometimes you want to quote a whole block of stuff from someone. this is often called a "block-quote". clever, the guy who came up with that name...
many of the project gutenberg e-texts contain block-quotes of one various type or another.
here's an example of a block-quote, a letter.
dear leslie,
how are you? i am fine.
the weather is nice here.
but i wish it was half
as beautiful as you are.
and i wish you were here.
love,
bowerbird
typically, block-quotes are indented on both the left and right sides.
here's another block-quote, from a speech.
four score and seven years ago, our
forefathers set forth upon this continent
a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that
all men[_2_] are created equal.
there are a number of different situations throughout the e-texts that might call for this type of indentation. for now, we will just subsume them all under "block-quote"; perhaps later we will see fit to break out a more finely-grained analysis, if we find any special cases merit their own class.