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How to Use Text-Indent in CSS

Christina Kopecky - January 04, 2021


The CSS indent property, known as the text-indent property, appears similar to a standard indent on the first line of every paragraph in an essay or paper you may have written in school; it indents the first line of every block of text just as you would indent the first line of a paragraph when writing a paper.

The code editor below shows how to create text-indent in pixels (px):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
   <head>
       <meta charset="UTF-8" />
       <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
       <title>Text Indent CSS</title>
   </head>
   <style>
       .example {
           text-indent: 25px;
       }
   </style>
   <body>
       <p class="example">
           Cat ipsum dolor sit amet, american bobtail. Scottish fold ragdoll, and savannah but thai. Bombay. Lion. British shorthair maine coon. Tom. Leopard cheetah abyssinian and ocicat or american shorthair, but birman donskoy. Ocelot. Devonshire rex cougar for kitten. American shorthair lion. Lynx. Balinese persian so norwegian forest sphynx malkin. Devonshire rex kitten panther. Leopard manx tom donskoy but russian blue, ocicat tabby.
       </p>
         
          
       <p class="example"> 
           Tomcat malkin, and ocelot. Puma. Balinese . Panther lynx or american bobtail and turkish angora, manx cougar. Malkin scottish fold but sphynx russian blue, maine coon balinese . Ocicat sphynx devonshire rex, mouser bobcat. Kitty maine coon american bobtail havana brown.
 
       </p>
       <p class="example">
           Birman sphynx ragdoll tabby so british shorthair. Persian bombay thai for birman. Kitty havana brown maine coon tomcat and himalayan, but donskoy. Tom american bobtail birman, and ragdoll or panther or leopard yet american bobtail. Devonshire rex ocicat and munchkin. Lion lynx norwegian forest munchkin, tiger yet cheetah. American bobtail persian. Cornish rex. Leopard. Havana brown savannah puma yet tabby american shorthair, puma but tom. Egyptian mau kitten and lynx, havana brown tom, and siberian munchkin. Ocelot siberian so cheetah. American bobtail tiger, and lion. Kitten russian blue yet ocicat mouser thai and lynx norwegian forest. Panther. Mouser thai egyptian mau but devonshire rex. Lion panther for kitten. Ocelot savannah yet leopard or sphynx. Ocicat savannah puma ragdoll thai for panther siamese.
          
       </p>
   </body>
</html>

This example shows you an absolute length unit called pixels (px) . You can also express the indent in relative/responsive length units like em , rem , and then % of the overall element’s/paragraph’s width. Try swapping out the pixel size for ems, rems and % to see what happens.

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Christina Kopecky

About the author: Christina is an experienced technical writer, covering topics as diverse as Java, SQL, Python, and web development. She earned her Master of Music in flute performance from the University of Kansas and a bachelor's degree in music with minors in French and mass communication from Southeast Missouri State. Prior to joining the Career Karma team in June 2020, Christina was a teaching assistant, team lead, and section lead at Lambda School, where she led student groups, performed code and project reviews, and debugged problems for students. Christina's technical content is featured frequently in publications like Codecademy, Repl.it, and Educative.

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