Authoring in Quarto

Advanced HTML

August 24, 2026

Advanced HTML


  • So far we have been using the basic HTML elements to create our documents
  • Quarto supports a wide range of HTML elements and attributes
  • We can use these to create more complex and interactive documents

Formatting Options

  • We can make our documents have a more sophisticated feel by specifying various options in the YAML header
  • Examples include title, subtitle, date, abstract, toc, etc.
  • We can also specify font styles and colors and control other aspects of the formatting
  • See this page to explore the various formatting options

Themes


  • Quarto supports a wide range of themes
  • We can use these to change the look and feel of our documents
  • Check out this page to explore the various themes available in Quarto

Generating Lorem Ipsum


  • For working on your document’s format it is helpful to have random text
  • The lorem package is helpful for this
  • You can also install an R Studio Addin

Your Turn!

  • Start a new Quarto project
  • Create a new Quarto document in your project folder
  • Generate some sections and some random text using the lorem package
  • Add a YAML header with the following options:
    • title:
    • subtitle:
    • date:
    • date-format:
    • theme:
    • toc:
  • Try adding at least one more option to your YAML header
  • Render the document and see what it looks like

Citations


  • With Quarto you can easily add citations to your document
  • Then a bibliography will be automatically generated
  • Too add a citation you can use the @ symbol followed by the citation key
  • In order to do this you need to know a little bit about BibTeX and/or CSL

BibTeX


  • BibTeX is a reference management software package
  • When we retrieve a citation for use in Quarto it should be in BibTeX format
  • BibTeX is a plain text format that is easy to read and write
  • To work with BibTeX you need a reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley
  • We are going to do Zotero

Zotero


  • Go to Zotero
  • Create an account
  • Download the Zotero app
  • Install the Zotero Connector for your browser
  • Install the Better BibTeX extension

Downloading Citations


  • Open Zotero
  • Go to google scholar
  • Search for a paper on a topic related to your research
  • Click the Zotero Connector to download the citation

Adding Citations


  • Export the bibliography as a .bib file from Zotero
  • Add the .bib file to your Quarto project folder
  • Add bibliography: and the name of the file to your YAML header
    • e.g. bibliography: mybib.bib

Citations in Text


  • Now you can add citations to your text
  • Use the @ symbol followed by the citation key
  • For example @smith2020 will add a citation to the paper by Smith (2020) assuming you have a citation in your .bib file with the key smith2020
  • Now you can render your document and see the bibliography at the end

Your Turn!


  • Add a bibliography to your Quarto document
  • Add a citation to your text
  • Render the document and see the bibliography at the end

Footnotes


  • You can also add footnotes to your document
  • Use the ^[] or [^1] syntax to add a footnote
  • There are different ways to add footnotes
  • I find that inline notes are the easiest to work with
    • For example ^[This is a footnote]

Scholarly Writing


  • Quarto is a great tool for scholarly writing
  • There are lots of formatting options for scholarly papers specifically
  • Check out this section of the Quarto guide for more details

Your Turn!


  • Add a footnote to your Quarto document
  • Explore the scholarly writing options in Quarto