A blockquote in a figure: When to use footer, when to use figcaption?

Question

There are two examples on the w3.org's blockquote-page:

Example 14:

<figure>
    <blockquote>
        "That monster custom, who all sense doth eat
        Of habit’s devil," <abbr title="et cetera">&c.</abbr> not in Folio

        "What a falling off was there !
        From me, whose love was of that dignity
        That it went hand in hand even with the vow
        I made to her in marriage, and to decline
        Upon a wretch."
    </blockquote>

    <footer>
        — <cite class="title">Shakespeare manual</cite>
        by <cite class="author">Frederick Gard Fleay</cite>,
        p19 (in Google Books)
    </footer>
</figure>

Example 19:

<figure>
    <blockquote>
        <p>
            The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with.
            It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held
            prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to
            be true. But our preferences do not determine what’s true. We have a
            method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only
            asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer
            and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered
            possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.
        </p>
    </blockquote>

    <figcaption>
        <cite>Carl Sagan</cite>,
        in "<cite>Wonder and Skepticism</cite>",
        from the <cite>Skeptical Inquirer</cite> Volume 19, Issue 1 (January-February 1995)
    </figcaption>
</figure>

Both look very similar to me - content-wise. But they say about the first one:

Note
In the example above, the citation is contained within the footer of a figure element, this groups and associates the information, about the quote, with the quote. The figcaption element was not used, in this case, as a container for the citation as it is not a caption.

However, I don't understand the distinction between both versions. Can someone explain the difference and what's important to distinguish between footer and figcaption?

Answer 1

Based on the following facts:

1. The non-normative examples in the W3C spec seem to contradict one another, as you've seen.
2. The W3C spec doesn't contain any normative text suggesting that either option is inappropriate. One of the examples claims that a citation is not a caption, but since it's not normative, you're well within your right to disagree.
3. From this WHATWG issue, the living spec editor as well as a W3C CSSWG (i.e. not HTML WG) member think the difference doesn't matter in practice, though the former seems to lean towards figcaption.
4. In practice, most authors place attribution information in figcaption anyway, with no apparent repercussions.

... the conclusion seems to be that there is no meaningful or practical difference between the two, and that whichever you choose to use is a matter of personal preference.

Having said that, if you're still unable to decide, figcaption is more compatible with both specifications, not in terms of conformance (since footer and figcaption are equally conforming), but in terms of how they both describe its role and usage, especially with relation to the figure element (generally, you expect text associated with a figure to be its caption). Either way, what's most important are the cite elements, since ultimately they're the ones conveying attribution semantics, not their container element.