CSS text-indent attribute

Definition

The text-indent property specifies the indentation of the first line of text in a text block.

Comment:Negative values are allowed. If negative values are used, the first line will be indented to the left.

Note:Before CSS 2.1, text-indent always inherited the computed value, not the declared value.

Description

Used to define the indentation of the first line of content in block-level elements. This is most commonly used to create a 'tab' effect. Negative values can be specified, which will produce a 'hanging indentation' effect.

See also:

CSS Tutorial:CSS Text

HTML DOM Reference Manual:textIndent property

Example

Indent the first line of the paragraph by 50 pixels:

p
  {
  text-indent:50px;
  }

Try it yourself

CSS syntax



Property value





Value
Description




length
Specifies fixed indentation. Default value: 0.




%
Specifies indentation based on a percentage of the parent element's width.




inherit
Specifies that the value of the text-indent property should be inherited from the parent element.









Technical details



  

    Default value:
    not specified
  

  

    Inheritance:
    yes
  

  

    Version:
    CSS1
  

  

    JavaScript syntax:
    object.style.textIndent="50px"
  








More examples




Indent text


This example demonstrates how to indent the first line of text.








Browser support


The numbers in the table indicate the first browser version that fully supports this attribute.





Chrome
IE / Edge
Firefox
Safari
Opera




1.0
3.0
1.0
1.0
3.5