Indenting Text

You won't indent text in Dreamweaver as you would with a word processor. The most common kind of indenting, indenting the first line in a paragraph, is usually done with a tab in a word processor, but tabs have no effect in HTML. Instead, you can use the text-indent CSS style rule. See Chapter 5 for more about using CSS.

You can add whitespace to textand simulate a tabwith non-breaking spaces. See "Inserting Special Characters," later in this chapter.

When you are indenting paragraphs to set them apart from preceding and following paragraphs, Dreamweaver uses the HTML <blockquote> tag. This indents both the left and right margins of the block quoted paragraph. You aren't limited to paragraphs; you can block quote any block element, such as headings.

To block quote text:

1.	Click in the paragraph or other block element you want to indent.
2.	Click the Indent button on the Property Inspector ( Figure 4.26 ). Figure 4.26. Use the Indent button to apply a block quote to your text. or In the Text category of the Insert Bar, click the Block Quote button. or Choose Text > Indent or press Ctrl-Alt-] (Cmd-Opt-]). The text changes ( Figure 4.27 ). Figure 4.27. The block quote nicely sets off the sonnet from the commentary text.

Tips

• To add more indenting, click the Indent button on the Property Inspector again. This nests the <blockquote> tags.

• The CSS margin style rule is a much more flexible way to indent block elements. See Chapter 5.

To remove block quoting:

1.	Click in the paragraph or other block element you want to indent.
2.	Click the Outdent button on the Property Inspector. or Choose Text > Outdent or press Ctrl-Alt-[(Cmd-Opt-[). The text changes.