Text channels in Discord can get pretty busy if you’ve got a fair number of people chatting in them. This can make it awkward to specifically respond to something said a few messages back. While you can right-click on the message that you’re replying to and click “Reply”, you may still want some extra clarity as to which part you are referring to if the original message is quite long.
This is where block quotes come in. Blockquotes allow you to highlight specific text in a format generally understood as being a quote. Blockquotes smoothly transition from single- to multi-line quotes.
Note: The official Discord documentation of the feature is outdated at the time of writing. The details provided in this article are accurate based on testing performed in November 2020.
To insert a blockquote, type a “greater than” symbol followed by a space “> ” at the start of the line. In the text box, the greater than symbol will be replaced with the blockquote structure.
Tip: If you can still see the greater than symbol when you’re typing, the blockquote won’t work. Ensure that there is no text before the greater than symbol and that there is a space directly after it.
Once you get to the end of the blockquote, you can immediately post the message by hitting enter, or you can go to a new line by pressing Shift + Enter. If you want to continue the quote on another line, you can press Shift + Enter once or twice depending on if you want to leave an empty line in between. If you want to instead close the blockquote and add a response, you can either press backspace and delete the blockquote at the start of the current line, or press Shift + Enter three times.