after some readings in the TeX book I came up with the following solution that works for me without having to change all my instances of startstopCitation in the text.
\definestartstop [Citation] [ before={\hangindent=20mm\hangafter=0\symbol[leftquotation]}, after={\removeunwantedspaces\symbol[rightquotation]}, ] \starttext \startCitation \input tufte \stopCitation \footnote{This is a Quote of Donald Knuth} \input tufte \stoptext ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki! maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://context.aanhet.net archive : https://bitbucket.org/phg/context-mirror/commits/ wiki : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________