Q is for Quote <q>

The quote element seems to be a hangover from the days when the internet was the preserve of academics exhanging learned papers.

Many academic papers will have quotations, and so it's no surprise that a quote element exists. This <q> is actually the one for a short quotation, and doesn't actually do any formatting to the enlcosed text! That has to be done with other styling. So on its own its changes nothing.

If you want to indent a long quotation then you should use the <blockquote> element.

HTML elements can be divided into two general levels: inline and block. Block level (e.g. <p>) are displayed as blocks and have line breaks before and after them.

Inline elements (e.g. <font>) are applied or displayed in line.

The <q> tag is an inline element while the <blockquote> is a block element.