Container blocks

A container block (opens new window) is a block that has other blocks as its contents. There are two basic kinds of container blocks: block quotes (opens new window) and list items (opens new window). Lists (opens new window) are meta-containers for list items (opens new window).
We define the syntax for container blocks recursively. The general form of the definition is:

If X is a sequence of blocks, then the result of transforming X in such-and-such a way is a container of type Y with these blocks as its content.

So, we explain what counts as a block quote or list item by explaining how these can be generated from their contents. This should suffice to define the syntax, although it does not give a recipe for parsing these constructions. (A recipe is provided below in the section entitled A parsing strategy (opens new window).)