On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 15:11:06 -0700, Nicholas Knight nknight@runawaynet.com gave utterance to the following:
On Thursday 07 August 2003 12:15, Brion Vibber wrote:
<blockquote> would work, but you're not _supposed_ to use it for indentation of things that aren't quotes.
The 4.01 standard says 'The usage of BLOCKQUOTE to indent text is deprecated in favor of style sheets.'
"Deprecated" doesn't mean "you can't do that", it's closer to "avoid doing that if possible, and if you go to a later standard, be ready to not be able to do it". But the doctype line at the top of Wikipedia's pages doesn't say "the latest standard", it says "HTML 4.01 Transitional", and HTML 4.01 transitional says "you can do it if you really want to". And since we appear to be stuck on supporting browsers that can't keep up with 5-7 year old standards, it would appear we "really want to".
But do text browsers actually indent blockquotes, or do they use colour to distinguish them such as they do for B, I, EM and STRONG? I think some graphic browsers Italicize a blockquote, and some screen readers might change voice. There is no legitimate way to indent text via HTML, and there never has been. So let's just write it off it for the tiny proportion of users with non-css capable UA's rather than harming things for the vast majority.