Template:Block indent/doc

Usage
block indent adds a block of indented text to a page.



Alternatives that are not recommended
A colon at the start of the line produces a similar indent, but it produces incorrect HTML. See MOS:INDENT. (An initial  was intended only for use after , in constructing description lists, but most editors have used it almost everywhere for indenting.)

Blockquote is for actual quotations only. Using it for block indent is not correct semantic HTML, and the appearance differs. (Blockquote produces the HTML  element, which indicates a block quotation; block indent produces the HTML element.)

The default display of block indent differs from that of Blockquote in that it does not:
 * introduce whitespace margins above or below the indented material (just add a blank line above and/or below manually); nor
 * indent from the right as well as the left (there is an optional parameter for this); nor
 * affect the font size of its contents; nor
 * (on mobile) bookend the block with large quotation marks; nor
 * support plain blank-line paragraph breaks inside it; nor
 * support attribution parameters (because block indent isn't for quotations).

Blockquote and block indent both support paragraph breaks using around second and subsequent paragraphs, as well as other HTML markup, and it is always safest to explicitly format with HTML rather than rely on MediaWiki's parser to do the right thing, because the developers could alter its behavior at any time.

Example
produces:

Parameters
1 a.k.a. text The material to be indented. , because any occurrence (e.g. in a URL, template, etc.) of the  character will break the template without it.

left a.k.a. em the value (e.g. 0.1 or 7 ) in  units by which to indent the material from the left; defaults to

right the value, also in, by which to indent the material from the right; defaults to   (use 7 to match the default left indentation)

style arbitrary CSS declarations, e.g. . This parameter should not normally be needed. Note: It already includes  by default, to avoid collision of the div's background with floating elements.

class any CSS class names (e.g. as defined at MediaWiki:Common.css), comma-separated if more than one. This parameter should not normally be needed.