Indenting a whole paragraph

Question

How do I indent a whole paragraph at the same distance from my left margin, with the simplest command or environment?

cmhughes · Answer 1 · 2011-11-23T23:52:45.947

You could use the adjustwidth environment from changepage package- a MWE follows. Note that adjustwidth environment deals with page breaks.

The adjustwidth environment takes 2 arguments: the first is the indent from the left margin, and the second is the indent from the right margin. See the documentation for more details.

screenshot

\documentclass{report}

\usepackage{lipsum}       % for sample text
\usepackage{changepage}   % for the adjustwidth environment

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\begin{adjustwidth}{2cm}{}
\lipsum[1]
\end{adjustwidth}
\end{document}

If you plan to use this idea a lot, then it's probably worth defining your own environment

\newenvironment{myenv}{\begin{adjustwidth}{2cm}{}}{\end{adjustwidth}}

which could be used as

\begin{myenv}
\lipsum[1]
\end{myenv}

Following Werner's comment, you could make your environment take an optional argument that would overwrite the default indentation:

\newenvironment{myenv}[1][2cm]{\begin{adjustwidth}{#1}{}}{\end{adjustwidth}}

score 88 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

88

Without any additional packages, you could wrap your paragraph in a minipage:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\hfill\begin{minipage}{\dimexpr\textwidth-3cm}
\lipsum[2]
\xdef\tpd{\the\prevdepth}
\end{minipage}

\prevdepth\tpd\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

In the above example, the paragraph depth correction (via \prevdepth is from How to keep a constant baselineskip when using minipages (or \parboxes)?).

The indent from the left is set to 3cm, but can be modified. Also, if a paragraph indent is required, use \indent within the minipage. All of the afore-mentioned modification can be automated. One caveat is that it will not allow breaking across the page boundary.

A rather crude way of doing it as well is to modify \leftskip:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/lipsum
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\setlength{\leftskip}{3cm}

\lipsum[2]

\setlength{\leftskip}{0pt}

\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Nov 23 '11 at 18:50

Werner

603,163

10

Crude as in simple, or ugly? – Ayman Elmasry Nov 23 '11 at 19:06
4

@AymanElmasry: It depends on what is contained between the modification. If nothing else uses \leftskip, then it is perfectly okay. Big layout changes such as that is usually put in an environment to either make it localized (so it reverts back to normal after the environment), or in some macro so that you have more control over it in a general setting... rather than just have length modifications mid-document. However, this all depends on the end-use. – Werner Nov 23 '11 at 19:09
you also need to adjust the spacing between the preceding paragraph and the indented one. this one doesn't look too bad, but if the last line of the preceding paragraph were longer, and had no descenders, it would look pretty awful. – barbara beeton Nov 23 '11 at 19:37
@barbarabeeton Agreed minipage is wrong for this and it can also end up at the bottom of the page and disappear. What is wrong using just \narrower?. – yannisl Nov 23 '11 at 19:48
@barbarabeeton: Sure, I guess an ending \strut would do. – Werner Nov 23 '11 at 19:51
4

Another reason for not using a minipage in this case is that the OP may want to allow page-breaks in the indented paragraphs. – lockstep Nov 23 '11 at 22:35
@Yiannis -- \narrower indents on the right as well as the left. as i understand the question, indentation is wanted only on the left. \leftskip <dimen> set off in a group ending with \par would do that; might need \noindent at the beginning. – barbara beeton Nov 25 '11 at 19:23
In line with the minipage thinking - I tried {quote} as well, and it seems to work on short listings... – sdaau Jul 02 '14 at 03:21

score 53 · Answer 3 · edited Oct 29 '17 at 18:23

53

Perhaps the easiest way to do that is to use \begin{quote} ... \end{quote} environment. It has a pretty similar effect:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]

\begin{quote}
\lipsum[2]
\end{quote}

\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

edited Oct 29 '17 at 18:23

user

4,745

answered Sep 27 '17 at 20:50

mathreader

775

1

This, as well as the addmargin example, are my favourite because they allow both left and right indentation at the same time. – user Mar 10 '23 at 20:51

Torbjørn T. · Answer 4 · 2015-08-14T16:37:21.950

In the KOMA classes, or with the scrextend package loaded, you can use the addmargin or addmargin* environments. The latter is for two sided layouts. The environment takes two arguments, the first being optional. Without the optional argument, the mandatory argument sets the indentation on both sides, while the optional argument specifies the left (or inner, for two sided layouts) indentation.

% Option 1: some other class and scrextend
% \documentclass{article}
% \usepackage{scrextend}
% end option 1

% Option 2: use a KOMA class
\documentclass{scrartcl}
% end, option 2

\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\begin{addmargin}[2cm]{0cm}
\lipsum[2]
\end{addmargin}
\begin{addmargin}{2cm}
\lipsum[3]
\end{addmargin}
\lipsum[4]
\end{document}

enter image description here

score 21 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 23 '11 at 18:49

21

You can use the \parshape primitive:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1]

\parshape 1 2cm \dimexpr\linewidth-2cm\relax
\lipsum[1]

\end{document}

answered Nov 23 '11 at 18:49

Gonzalo Medina

505,128

It only affects that one paragraph and not the following ones? – Convexity Jan 23 '23 at 10:52

yannisl · Answer 6 · 2011-11-24T03:50:03.763

14

You can use the plain TeX command \narrower. You can also use \hangindent and \hangafter for a bit more control if you wish.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1]
\narrower
\lipsum[1]
\end{document}

You can also define a short margin to achieve the opposite effect:

\def\wider{%
   \advance\leftskip -\parindent
   \advance\rightskip -\parindent}

edited Nov 24 '11 at 03:50

answered Nov 23 '11 at 19:37

yannisl

117,160

1

How do you reverse the \narrower command after the desired part has been modified? – Ayman Elmasry Nov 23 '11 at 23:07
2

@AymanElmasry: you can keep the effect local by grouping: {\narrower \lipsum*[1]\par} – Gonzalo Medina Nov 24 '11 at 02:07
@AymanElmasry You can use {} to keep the effects local as Gonzalo mentioned, normally I use a small macro called \wider. Please see my edit. – yannisl Nov 24 '11 at 03:52

Esteis · Answer 7 · 2015-08-14T16:31:24.933

Just in case somebody ends up here seeking a ConTeXt answer:

\startnarrower[left=2cm, right=3cm]
    There was a sigh in the air that grew to a mutter, and a mutter that 
    grew to a roar, and a roar that passed all sense of hearing, and the 
    hillside on which the villagers stood was hit in the darkness, and 
    rocked to the blow.
\stopnarrower

Or, to specify the narrowing for both sides at once:

% 2cm narrower on each side, 4cm in total
\startnarrower[middle=2cm]
    Then a note as steady, deep, and true as the deep C of the organ 
    drowned everything for perhaps five minutes, while the very roots of the 
    pines quivered to it. It died away, and the sound of the rain falling on 
    miles of hard ground and grass changed to the muffled drum of water on 
    soft earth. That told its own tale.
\stopnarrower

(Example text from Kipling's "The Miracle of Purun Bhagat", from The Second Jungle Book.)

score 3 · Answer 8 · answered Aug 14 '15 at 17:08

xgalley (or l3galley) provides a similar means to adjust margins either relative to the current margins or in an absolute way. Below I've used the latter:

\documentclass{article}
% http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/media/conferences/tug-2015/0302-Joseph-Wright/
\usepackage{xgalley}
\usepackage{kantlipsum}

\ExplSyntaxOn
\cs_new_eq:NN \SetAbsMargins \galley_margins_set_absolute:nn % {<left margin>}{<right margin>}
\cs_new_eq:NN \SetRelMargins \galley_margins_set_relative:nn % {<left margin>}{<right margin>}
\ExplSyntaxOff

\begin{document}

\kant[1]

\begingroup
\SetAbsMargins{3cm}{0pt}

\kant[2]
\endgroup

\kant[3]

\end{document}

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 17 '17 at 16:13

I have tried a few of the solutions above. A lot of them cause the error/warning

Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item

This is due to the fact that the \adjustwidth and \addmargin (as well as the quote and quotation environment( internally use something as a list enviroment, which causes if the indendented region contains new paragraphs. (Reference http://www.tex.ac.uk/FAQ-errmissitem.html)

I have found a solution which worked better in this case (taken from http://texblog.net/latex-archive/uncategorized/changing-margins-paragraph/):

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\parindent0em
\parskip\baselineskip
\begin{document}
\blindtext

\par
\begingroup
\leftskip4em
\rightskip\leftskip
\blindtext
\par
\endgroup

\blindtext
\end{document}

The important part is in between \begingroup and \endgroup. Currently this causes equal left and right indentation by 4em, but you can set the \rightskip to something else or leave it out entirely.

Indenting a whole paragraph

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