Indentation

An indentation may refer to:

  • A notch, or deep recesses; for instance in a coastline, or a carving in rock
  • The placement of text farther to the right to separate it from surrounding text.

The first meaning is also applied in hardness measurement as in indentation hardness.

For an example of the second meaning, this is an indentation of one non-breaking space:

Indented block because this is something

and this is an indentation of two non-breaking spaces:

Indented block 2

In the written form of many languages, an indentation is often used at the beginning of a line to signal the start of a new paragraph.

Outdentation is a neologism used in computer circles to describe placing text back to the left again.

See Wikipedia:Outdent for the Wikipedia discussion template.

Some languages (e.g., Hebrew and Arabic) are written right-to-left, and if indentation is used, in the above "left" and "right" should be swapped when referring to such languages.

Read more about Indentation:  Indentation in Typesetting, Indentation in Programming