Indent first line of most paragraphs, not all

If you really want to have this for every paragraph, it is enough to specify it once in the CSS of the theme:

p { text-indent: 40px; }

Then the editor has no other choice as it is a design default.

By the way, this is the reason why this is not available as an option (not even in Gutenberg) and not as a plugin. Because what kind of width should apply there when the editor activates it? The theme would have to specify this width, it should then also be uniform for all paragraphs where it is activated / set – which theme does that? I don’t know of any.

So the easiest solution is what you have already recognized yourself: via Custom CSS for paragraphs. You could also solve this via a class that the editor can then optionally set:

p.indent { text-indent: 40px; }

The editor can then enter the class “indent” in Gutenberg for the paragraph block under “Advanced”.

Thanks for this.

Unfortunately, none of the solutions proposed is practicable with high school and middle school students.

From what you say, it seems that this will continue to be a problem until someone comes up with a theme that is specifically designed to allow for both block (unindented) and indented paragraphs, with an easy way for users to designate which kind of paragraph they want in each case.

It is always discouraging when technology determines design, instead of the other way round.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 5 months ago by ericmacknight.

As a content author with a background in technical documentation and electronic publishing, I find the lack of an easy way to control the indentation of individual paragraphs (first line indent or indenting a whole paragraph without a bullet or number) to be inexcusable. This is easily possible in every word processing system I have used, and was certainly provided for in professional structured authoring applications without requiring user programming to achieve. This is probably the single most irritating issue that leads me to HATE WordPress as an authoring and publishing environment. It should be possible design a generic paragraph block that enables such settings to be made on a paragraph by paragraph basis as required by the text.

Many thanks if someone can come up with an easy fix that writers can use without being programmers.

@whall3: I agree 100%! Thanks for adding your 2 cents!

I wrote a supporting response a while back but it didn’t appear for some reason. I share your frustration and not just a little disdain for WordPress who is supposed to serve just this purpose for authors of various stripes. Whoever programmed this to dictate what standard English format has to be didn’t have literature or aesthetics in mind. When I did a simple search for standard English formats the rules were very clear that the first line of each paragraph should be indented. The irony is that some of these informative sites were not allowed to indent the first line of the paragraphs explaining the rule. My question though is this: I’m imagining that WordPress isn’t perusing these forums for good suggestions on how to improve their platform. That said, how do we get them to pay attention and address the problem? I’m sure we could get a hundred English scholars to rap their knuckles with a ruler until they fixed this.It really is absurd–not to mention aggravating (I seem to have just mentioned it). With hope my comments will get posted.

@tziptkeh I, too, am unsure how software development is driven at WordPress. Clearly, those of us who see the value and importance of indenting to indicate a new paragraph are a small minority of the WordPress community.

You are talking about additions to the Block Editor here. If you have suggestions for improvements, you are welcome to submit them to the Gutenberg team, which develops this part of WordPress: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues

@threadi Great! Thank you!

Following @threadi’s advice, I have created a GitHub account and have re-posted the bulk of my original post here: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/issues/45926.

Fingers crossed!

You should describe the problem there in more detail. Currently you can see only one title. No one there will be able to do anything with it.

@threadi Thanks again! I put all of that in when I created the discussion, but as you say, none of that appeared. I have pasted it again, this time into the “comment” field. I think it’s clear now, yes?

It appears that there are three on-going discussions of this issue on GitHub, all since Dec 2021.

Hope springs eternal!

How can it be that hard to indent the first line to a paragraph without having to code something. It is such a needed feature, so why are there no solutions? I accidentally did it once and now can’t figure it out..

I absolutely AGREE! Not having the ability to indent only the first line is inexcusable, to say the least. Is this 2023 or 1999?

I agree and was amazed to see that this even had to be debated.