Glossary
Citable Passage
Placeholder — real content arrives in the first tranche
The short answer
What is a citable passage?
A citable passage is a block of prose an AI answer engine can lift and quote without any surrounding context. In practice it is 40 to 75 words for the snippet window or roughly 134 to 167 words for the citation window, states its claim in the first sentence, and carries at least 1 verifiable number.
PLACEHOLDER — exemplar shape only. This body is scaffold filler; the real definition arrives in the first content tranche under the content contract.
A citable passage is the unit of optimization in this whole library: the block of prose an answer engine actually lifts. The glossary exemplar stays minimal on purpose — a quotable opener, the term's dimensions, one disambiguation.
The dimensions
PLACEHOLDER. The real section anchors both size windows to measurement.
| Window | Words | Surface |
|---|---|---|
| Snippet | 40–75 | Featured snippets, AI Overviews |
| Citation | ~134–167 | Chat-engine citations |
Where the term sits in the engine
PLACEHOLDER. The real section links the term to the blocks that implement it in the operator's guide — answer box, takeaways, citable summary — and to the speakable schema selector that points engines at them.
Frequently asked questions
What is a citable passage?
A self-contained block of prose an AI answer engine can lift and quote without surrounding context — claim first, at least one verifiable number, sized 40–75 words for snippets or roughly 134–167 words for citations.
What makes a passage fail as a citable passage?
Dependence on context: pronouns pointing outside the block, setup sentences before the claim, or figures that only make sense next to a table. If quoting it alone would confuse a reader, an engine will not lift it.
How many citable passages should a page carry?
In our production builds, 2 dedicated blocks per page: a 40–75-word answer box and an optional ~150-word summary, plus 3–6 takeaway sentences that each work standalone.
Is a citable passage the same as a featured snippet?
No. The featured snippet is one surface that lifts such passages. The same block also feeds AI Overviews, chat-engine citations, and voice answers — that is why the block is defined by its self-containedness, not by any 1 surface.