---
title: Cite, Quote and Twitter
date: 2009-03-04T16:58:15+00:00
modified: 2012-08-23T10:19:31+00:00
permalink: https://kaspars.net/blog/cite-quote-and-twitter
post_type: post
author:
  name: Kaspars
  avatar: https://reverse.kaspars.net/gravatar/avatar/92bfcd3a8c3a21a033a6484d32c25a40b113ec6891f674336081513d5c98ef76?s=96&d=mm&r=g
category:
  - Development
post_format:
  - Aside
post_tag:
  - Semantics
---

# Cite, Quote and Twitter

Why doesn’t twitter use `<cite>` tag for all @replies and `<blockquote>` for the actual content? It would make things more semantic.

### Suggestion

Currently tweets have the following HTML structure:

```
<li id="status_ID" class="hentry status u-username">
<span class="status-body">
	<span class="entry-content">Here goes the tweet with an awesome link to an awesome website</span>
	<span class="meta entry-meta">
		<a class="entry-date" rel="bookmark" href="http://domain/username/status/ID">
			<span class="published">about 16 hours ago</span>
		</a>
		<span>from <a href="http://twittertool.url">twittertool</a></span>
	</span>
</span>
</li>
```

and now the semantic way:

```
<blockquote id="status_ID" class="u-username" cite="http://domain/username/status/ID">
	<p>Here goes the tweet with an awesome link to an awesome website</p>
	<cite><a rel="bookmark" href="http://domain/username/status/ID">2012.01.01 13:45</a></cite>
	<span>from <a href="http://twittertool.url">twittertool</a></span>
</blockquote>
```