The following is a braindump, apologies in advance:

The usage of italics for whole paragraphs is proscribed by some English-language style guides (writing this from memory, don’t ask me which ones) and, given my academic experience, could even be forbidden if not for a couple of foreign words. Also, this styling depends on the customs of each culture and the set of standards that each language may have. On the other hand, there are opinions of typographers that italics could be less readable than upright when used extensibly rather than sporadically (for emphasizing effect). Given that the intent of this bug is achieving uniformity and consistency among the built-in styles, wouldn’t be better if we remove the italics from the Quotation style by default? That way, the user can add it back if needed.

(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #1)
> The usage of italics for whole paragraphs is proscribed by some
> English-language style guides (writing this from memory, don’t ask me which
> ones) and, given my academic experience, could even be forbidden if not for
> a couple of foreign words. Also, this styling depends on the customs of each
> culture and the set of standards that each language may have. On the other
> hand, there are opinions of typographers that italics could be less readable
> than upright when used extensibly rather than sporadically (for emphasizing
> effect).

I'm not a writer or an academic, so i dont really have knowledge from there, but from whatever reading i do online, i regularly see articles with paragraphs that are indented and italicize when it is a quote (e.g. http://www.theguardian.com/technology/askjack/2015/sep/03/switch-openoffice-libreoffice-or-microsoft-office, http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve-lunarg-vulkan&num=2 ). I also just had a look at MS Word and they have a paragraph style 'Quote' and it is italic, though they dont have a similar character style.

> Given that the intent of this bug is achieving uniformity and
> consistency among the built-in styles, wouldn’t be better if we remove the
> italics from the Quotation style by default? That way, the user can add it
> back if needed.

If we removed italics from the Quotation character style, what would make it different from regular text by default?

Some years ago I had to write in APA style. It changed over the years but at least it has a very detailed description. Here is a link to long quotations (in contrast to what they call "short quotations") https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

Place direct quotations that are 40 words, or longer, in a free-standing block of typewritten lines, and omit quotation marks. Start the quotation on a new line, indented 1/2 inch from the left margin, i.e., in the same place you would begin a new paragraph. Type the entire quotation on the new margin, and indent the first line of any subsequent paragraph within the quotation 1/2 inch from the new margin. Maintain double-spacing throughout. The parenthetical citation should come after the closing punctuation mark.

Most likly there are other styles that demand italic formatting for quotations.

(In reply to Yousuf (Jay) Philips from comment #2)
> If we removed italics from the Quotation character style, what would make it
> different from regular text by default?

The indentation, for example. Or the font size. That’s what the English Wikipedia does.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> Some years ago I had to write in APA style. It changed over the years but at
> least it has a very detailed description. Here is a link to long quotations
> (in contrast to what they call "short quotations")
> https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/

Thanks a lot for that. The APA style is used in many countries; so while we don’t have a template for each style, maybe we can forget what I said in comment 1 and keep italics in Quotations by default.

(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #4)
> (In reply to Yousuf (Jay) Philips from comment #2)
> > If we removed italics from the Quotation character style, what would make it
> > different from regular text by default?
> 
> The indentation, for example. Or the font size. That’s what the English
> Wikipedia does.

I'm not following. What indentation is there for inline quotation character style, when character styles dont have paragraph properties. Do you have an example wikipedia page link where i can see this.

(In reply to Adolfo Jayme from comment #4)
> (In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #3)
> > Some years ago I had to write in APA style. It changed over the years but at
> > least it has a very detailed description. Here is a link to long quotations
> > (in contrast to what they call "short quotations")
> > https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/02/
> 
> Thanks a lot for that. The APA style is used in many countries; so while we
> don’t have a template for each style, maybe we can forget what I said in
> comment 1 and keep italics in Quotations by default.

Well we could get really ambitious and integrate *ALL* the formatting styles from Zotero

https://www.zotero.org/styles

But suspect the full scope, and licensing (AGPLv3), of that means it is best left as an extension.  Still ideas for what users might find useful.  I write mostly in Chicago/Turabian ;-)

(In reply to V Stuart Foote from comment #6)
> Well we could get really ambitious and integrate *ALL* the formatting styles
> from Zotero
> 
> https://www.zotero.org/styles

There seems to be a (buggy) plugin to support CSL/Zotero: https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=64361
If we go with such a high flexibility we'd need a plugin system (similar to "Get Hot New Stuff" or "Eye candy"). Flexible loading of templates, plugins, icon sets, styles etc. would be a great enhancement.

So I believe we had agreement that italics is a good thing so how do we move this forward. Of course this fix shouldnt affect Writer Web which requires Quotations to be without italics.