Vertical Spacing Block Quotes

Question

I have some issues with the vertical spacing above and below block quotes. As always, a MWE first:

\documentclass{scrreprt}

\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\usepackage[%                                       
    threshold       =   39,                     
    thresholdtype   =   words]                  
    {csquotes}                                  

\usepackage[%
    font            =   small]                  
    {quoting}

\SetBlockEnvironment{quoting}               
\usepackage{etoolbox}                           
\AtBeginEnvironment{quoting}{\singlespacing}    
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[2]
\blockquote{This is a test that will show that the vertical spacing above and below this block quote is not even. Does anyone have an idea how to fix this behaviour? \LaTeX can sometimes be really frustrating. I hope that this quote has a length of 40 words.}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

The spacing above the block quote seems to be less than the spacing below it (0,71 inches vs. 0,75 inches if you measure from baseline to baseline). What could be the reason for that? I would like to have an exact identical vertical spacing.

Thank you for posting a working example! At the same time, much of your code does not seem to be relevant to the question you're asking here. Please limit the example to only the code required for your issue to appear. You can have a look at this guide for how to prune your code for this purpose. — jarauh, Oct 25 '15 at 15:38
I have updated my example to a minimum. Some packages I need to use might be the source of my problem. — SeMe, Oct 25 '15 at 15:45
Could you provide a picture? It doesn't look too bad for me. — jarauh, Oct 25 '15 at 16:11
Do you really want a paragraph indent of 0 with no other changes? That will make it impossible in some cases to see that a new paragraph is beginning. Consider using the parskip option of scrreprt. Also, you should recalculate the type area after loading setspace and load scrhack before loading setspace as explained in the KOMA documentation. But can KOMA's algorithms deal with changing the size of font for quotations? KOMA attempts to lay out the text block sensibly based on the font dimensions.... — cfr, Oct 25 '15 at 20:51
By the way, \singlespacing is designed for use in the preamble - not for use in the body of the document. For that, the environment singlespace is provided. See the documentation of setspace. — cfr, Oct 25 '15 at 21:06

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 25 '15 at 16:56

You can set an explicit length for the before and after skip, using the vskip key.

\documentclass{scrreprt}

\usepackage[onehalfspacing]{setspace}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\usepackage[%                                       
    threshold       =   39,                     
    thresholdtype   =   words]                  
    {csquotes}                                  

\usepackage[%
    font            =   small,
    vskip = 20pt]                  
    {quoting}

\SetBlockEnvironment{quoting}               
\usepackage{etoolbox}                           
\AtBeginEnvironment{quoting}{\singlespacing}    
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[2]
\blockquote{This is a test that will show that the vertical spacing above and below this block quote is not even. Does anyone have an idea how to fix this behaviour? \LaTeX can sometimes be really frustrating. I hope that this quote has a length of 40 words.}
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

But is there a similar way to change only one of the two spaces? — jarauh, Oct 25 '15 at 18:19

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '15 at 18:18

I think that the different spacing is due to the \singlespacing. If you add

\AtEndEnvironment{quoting}{\onehalfspacing},

it seems to me that the spacing is more symmetric. One problem is of course: Which distance is the relevant one? Measuring from baseline to baseline ignores the fact that the two fonts are of different size. But from which line should one measure? Top of a capital letter or top of a small letter? It's important that the white space seems to be symmetric.

If this doesn't look good for you, it is also always possible to fix things directly:

\AtEndEnvironment{quoting}{\vspace{-0.06in}}

where the 0.06in should be replaced by your favourite value.

Vertical Spacing Block Quotes

2 Answers2