An indent in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) or tag property that causes one or more visual elements on a web page to move a certain distance from the margin of its enclosing block. . The effect of using an HTML indent is the same as using print indents. The most accepted way to indent an HTML document is to use CSS to change the text indent property of the paragraph that contains the text. Some formatting instructions, such as lists and quotation marks, automatically indent their content to differentiate it from surrounding text. Using CSS to insert an HTML indent only works on the first line of the paragraph and does not work on an entire block, which can be achieved with different formatting properties.
The most accepted way to indent an HTML document is to use CSS to change the text indent property of the paragraph that contains the text.
The way the HTML standard works, multiple spaces and the tab character used on most computers to create indents are removed from the files before the code is parsed for display. This means that text that appears formatted in a word processor will not retain that formatting if it is pasted directly into an HTML document, unless the text is pasted into an HTML editing program, what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG ). To indent the first line of a paragraph, or to indent an entire block of text, special HTML and CSS code must be used.
The text-indent property of block-level elements in CSS will indent the first raw, rendered element in a block. The indent value must be specified numerically. The option allows the user to specify a number that tells the browser how many pixels, points, centimeters, or other forms of measurement the line should be indented. This number can also be a percentage of the total width of the block. This CSS option works only at the block level, indents only the first line, and doesn’t work on elements that already have a predefined type of formatting behavior, such as bulleted lists.
A hanging HTML indent is the opposite of a standard indent and will pull the first line of a block back so that it renders to the left of the rest of the lines in the paragraph when the text is aligned to read left to right. The same text-indent property is used for an HTML hanging indent, except that the indent value number is negative. This method only works if a block’s margin and border values are large enough to contain the hanging indent.
You can set an HTML indent that moves an entire block or paragraph. This can be done with various block-level CSS properties, including modifying the margins or spacing of the containing block on a page. It can also be achieved with basic HTML tags like blockquote or pre, which stands for preformatted text. The downside of using basic tags to create HTML indentation is that the amount of text that is moved cannot be explicitly controlled or set.
