Indentation (typesetting)

In the written form of many languages, indentation describes empty space, a.k.a. white space, used around text to signify an important aspect of the text such as:

• Beginning of a paragraph
• Hierarchy – subordinate concept
• Quotation

Many computer languages use block indentation to demarcate blocks of source code.

Indention is essentially the same regardless of whether the writing system is left-to-right (e.g. Latin and Cyrillic) or right-to-left (e.g. Hebrew and Arabic) when considering line beginning and end. For example, indenting at the beginning of line means on the left for a left-to-right script and on the right for right-to-left script.

Indent is both a noun and a verb. The verb is the act of formatting text to be indented whereas the noun refers to the resulting empty space.