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<title>CSS: Indenting Text</title>
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<h1 id="css-indenting-text">CSS: Indenting Text</h1>
<p>2019-04-05</p>
<p>A lot of developers tend to do the bare minimum when it comes to implementing proper website typography. This isn’t an insult - I’m happy that typography is given any thought at all during development, I just believe more can always be done to improve upon it.</p>
<p>In today’s <em>TypeTip</em> we’re going to play around with the <code>text-indent</code> property, look into when it’s best to use it and how to implement it properly.</p>
<h2 id="the-property-and-browser-support">The property and browser support</h2>
<p>Browser support is actually pretty great for such a regularly over-looked CSS property. All major desktop and mobile browsers support it:</p>
<p>Now that doesn’t mean you should just slap this property on all your type elements and call it a day - there are specific use cases for <code>text-indent</code> and some basic rules to follow:</p>
<h2 id="use-cases">Use Cases</h2>
<ol>
<li>Increasing readability of large text blocks that would otherwise overwhelm the reader</li>
<li>Replicating book or report typography layouts</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="basic-rules">Basic Rules</h2>
<ol>
<li>Best to set this property on inner type children only - meaning items like <code>p</code> or <code>blockquotes</code> instead of main headings</li>
<li>When used on paragraph tags it’s best to target only <code>p</code> elements that directly follow a sibling tag (see “The CSS” below)</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="the-css">The CSS</h2>
<p>Adding the property is extremely trivial, all you need is the following:</p>
<pre><code>/* Best practice for paragraphs */
p + p {
text-indent: 1rem; /* whatever you want */
}
</code></pre>
<h2 id="lets-see-it-in-action">Let’s see it in action</h2>
<p><a href="https://codepen.io/bradleytaunt/pen/OGXLEd/">Live CodePen Example</a></p>
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