Markdown blockquote body has no syntax highlighting target

[keithgw]

Summary

Markdown blockquote bodies render as default body text in every Zed theme, because the block_quote paragraph isn't given its own tree-sitter capture in the markdown grammar. The > marker gets @punctuation.markup (dim), but the quoted paragraph itself inherits the generic @text capture, so themes have nothing distinct to color.

This means quoted passages are visually indistinguishable from surrounding prose, even on themes that style headings, code, and links well.

Repro

Open a markdown file with a blockquote in any theme:

Regular paragraph text.

> A quoted passage that should look visually distinct.

More regular paragraph text.

The quote body looks identical to the surrounding paragraphs.

Prior art

Issue #10660 ("Blockquotes Styling") raised this in 2024-04. A Zed contributor sketched a fix in that thread:

(block_quote
  (block_quote_marker) @punctuation.block_quote_marker
  (paragraph) @text.block_quote
)

The issue was auto-closed in the feature-request cleanup before the patch landed. Reopening as a Discussion per the new process.

Proposed direction

1. Add a block_quote capture in crates/grammars/src/markdown/highlights.scm that tags the body paragraph distinctly (e.g., @text.quote or @text.block_quote, whichever name fits Zed's existing syntax-key conventions).
2. Add a corresponding entry to the theme syntax-key set so themes (built-in and community) can style it.
3. Optionally, give the default themes a sensible style for it (italic + dimmed foreground is the common convention).

Related: #9461 ("Support more syntax tokens for theme configuration") tracks the broader gap; this is a concrete, scoped instance.

Why it matters

Markdown is a primary use case for many Zed users (notes, READMEs, docs, retros). Blockquotes are a universal element, and the lack of distinct styling is one of the more visible markdown gaps versus other editors (Sublime, VS Code, Helix all style quotes by default).

[aaxx]

Plus +1 , it's very needed feature for markdown files for mee

[marcoms]

I personally always customize blockquotes to be italic and a different color to differentiate them from regular paragraphs, so I've been really missing this from VSCode