How to indent a few lines in Markdown markup?

There's no way to do that in markdown's native features. However markdown allows inline HTML, so writing

      This will appear with six space characters in front of it

will produce:

      This will appear with six space characters in front of it

If you have control over CSS on the page, you could also use a tag and style it, either inline or with CSS rules.

Either way, markdown is not meant as a tool for layout, it is meant to simplify the process of writing for the web, so if you find yourself stretching its feature set to do what you need, you might look at whether or not you're using the right tool here. Check out Gruber's docs:

http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#html

One way to do it is to use bullet points, which allows you specify multiple levels of indentation. Bullet points are inserted using multiples of two spaces, star, another space Eg.:

this is a normal line of text
  * this is the first level of bullet points, made up of <space><space>*<space>
    * this is more indented, composed of <space><space><space><space>*<space>

This method has the great advantage that it also makes sense when you view the raw text.

If you care about not seeing the bullet points themselves, you should (depending on where you're using markdown) to be able to add li {list-style-type: none;} to the css for the whole mark down area.

See if this ">" helps:

Line 1
> line 2 
>> line 3

This is an old thread, but I would have thought markdown's blockquotes ('> ') would be best for this:

One of the problems with starting your line with non-breaking spaces is that if your line is long enough to wrap, then when it spills onto a second line the first character of the overflow line will start hard left instead of starting under the first character of the line above it.

If your system allows you to mix HTML in with your markdown, a cheap and cheerful way of getting an indent is like this:

<ul>
My indented text goes here, and it can be long and wrap if you like.
And you can have multiple lines if you want.
</ul>

Semantically within your HTML it is nonsense (a UL section without any LI items), but all browsers I have used just happily indent what's between those tags.

do tab, then the + sign, then space, then your content

So

* level one + level two tabbed

What about place a determined space in the start of paragraph using the math environment of 1em space as like:

$\quad$ My line of text ...

This works for me and hope work for you too.

I would use  , it's a lot cleaner in my opinion.

As pointed out by @AlexDupuy in the comments, definition lists can be used for this.

This is not supported by all markdown processors, but is widely available: Markdown Guide - Definition Lists

Term 1
: definition 1
: definition 2

Term 2
: definition 1
: definition 2

Renders as (html):

<dl>
    <dt>Term 1</dt>
    <dd>definition 1</dd>
    <dd>definition 2</dd>
    <dt>Term 2</dt>
    <dd>definition 1</dd>
    <dd>definition 2</dd>
</dl>

Typically the DT is rendered in a heading-like format, and each DD is rendered as indented text beneath this.

If you don't want a heading/term, just use a non-breaking space in place of the definition term:

 
: This is the text that I want indented.  All text on the same line as the preceding colon will be included in this definition.
: If you include a second definition you'll get a new line; potentially separated by a space. <br />Some inline HTML may be supported within this too, allowing you to create new lines without spaces.
: Support for other markdown syntax varies; e.g. we can add a bullet list, but each one's wrapped in a separate definition term, so the spacing may be out.
: - item 1
: - item 2
: - item 3

You can see this in action by copy-pasting the above examples to this site: Stack Edit Markdown Editor

---

Update 2025-05-06

@RokeJulianLockhart: Can these be nested?

Yes; again there isn't one definitive standard so YMMV with different providers, but this works for me at stackedit:

 
: indent level 1
:  
  : indent level 2

Suprisingly nobody came up with the idea of just using a div with padding yet, so here you go:

<div style="padding-left: 30px;">
My text
</div>

If you really must use tabs, and you don't mind the grey background-color and padding, <pre> tags might work (if supported):

<pre>
This        That        And             This
That        This        And             That    
</pre>

This        That        And             This
That        This        And             That    

For quoted/indented paragraphs this hack might work (depending on render engine):

| | | |
|-|-|-|
|  | _"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."_ | |
|

which renders as:

Check if you can use HTML with your markdown. Maybe this works out for you:

• List entry one<br/>
  Indented line<br/>
<br/>
  And some more..
• Second entry
  • Subentry<br/>
    Hello there!

As a workaround I would suggest inserting a vertical bar (|) followed by hard spaces (Alt-Code on Windows: Alt+0160). This preserves the indent after the bar resulting in a visually acceptable solution for raw and rendered Markdown.

This is a normal line of text.
|    This is an indented line of text.
|        This is another indented line of text.

If LaTeX formulas are supported (like in GitHub), you can conveniently indent lines by any offset, by using commands like:

\hspace{<skip>}

where <skip> indicates the length of the indentation space, and can be expressed in millimeres (mm), centimeters (cm), or any supported format (you can find a list here).

For instance, this code:

Indented lines:
$\hspace{5pt}$ This line is indented 5 points.
$\hspace{5mm}$ This line is indented 5 millimeters.
$\hspace{2cm}$ This line is indented 2 centimeters.

will produce this output:

Use a no-break space directly   (not the same as !).

(You could insert HTML or some esoteric markdown code, but I can think of better reasons to break compatibility with standard markdown.)

To answer MengLu and @lifebalance's questions in response to SColvin's answer (which I much prefer to the accepted answer for the control it provides), it seems as though you could just target a parent element of the lists when setting the display to none, adding a surrounding element if necessary. So if we suppose we're doing this for a table of contents, we can extend SColvin's answer:

HTML

<nav class="table-of-contents">
  this is a normal line of text
  * this is the first level of bullet points, made up of <space><space>*<space>
    * this is more indented, composed of <space><space><space><space>*<space>
</nav>

CSS

.table-of-contents ul {
  list-style-type: none;
}

For completeness, the deeper bulleted lists:

Nested deeper levels: ---- leave here an empty row * first level A item - no space in front the bullet character * second level Aa item - 1 space is enough * third level Aaa item - 5 spaces min * second level Ab item - 4 spaces possible too * first level B item

Nested deeper levels:

• first level A item - no space in front the bullet character
  • second level Aa item - 1 space is enough
    • third level Aaa item - 5 spaces min
  • second level Ab item - 4 spaces possible too

• first level B item

  Nested deeper levels:
   ...Skip a line and indent eight spaces. (as said in the editor-help, just on this page)
  * first level A item - no space in front the bullet character
   * second level Aa item - 1 space is enough
       * third level Aaa item - 5 spaces min
      * second level Ab item - 4 spaces possible too
  * first level B item
  
          And there
          could be even more
          such octets of spaces.
  

Another alternative is to use a markdown editor like StackEdit. It converts html (or text) into markdown in a WYSIWYG editor. You can create indents, titles, lists in the editor, and it will show you the corresponding text in markdown format. You can then save, publish, share, or download the file. You can access it on their website - no downloads required!

Okay, with a little HTML in your R code, I did the following code to generate pure text in R Markdown. The <h3 style="text-indent: 15em;"> indents the text 15 spaces. For the original question, change the 15 to 6.

## Option: Du Pont Ratio Concept - (ROE Decomposition)
### (Closed Quotes/Total Premium) = (Closed Quotes/Quotes Issued) X <br>
<h3 style="text-indent: 15em;">
 (Quotes Issued/Renewal Premium) X <br></h3>
<h3 style="text-indent: 15em;">
 (Renewal Premium/Total Premium)</h3>

So the resulting code gives my desired output format. I am using tabs for the Markdown document and was looking to line up the () text which worked.

If you're working with bullet points, try this:

<ul>
  <li>Coffee</li>
  <li>Tea
    <ul>
      <li>Black tea</li>
      <li>Green tea</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Milk</li>
</ul>

This is the method I use when styling markdown.

On gitlab.com a single en space (U+2002) followed by a single em space (U+2003) works decently.

Presumably other repetitions or combinations of not-exactly-accounted-for space characters would also suffice.

Clean, simple and code readable

Swap the bullet (-) mark and that's all

description 1

• this is the content matching description 1

description 2

• this is the content matching description 2

Because it allows inline html, here is how I did it:

Example:
<div style="margin: 3px 0 0 20px;">Your Text Here</div>

Result:

If your markdown supports html, you can also try

<p style="margin-left: 30px"> ... </p>