Help with css formatting - first line indent

[Alda]

Hello,

The stylesheet I'm using indents the first line of every paragraph - which is great. However, I want the first line of each chapter and after section dividers NOT to indent. I can't do it by simply backspacing, so can anyone help with a css code that would help me do that?

Thanks!

[Turtle91]

You can either give each paragraph a special class with appropriate formatting, or use a little more technical CSS styling and it will do it automatically.

.noind {text-indent:0}

<p class="noind">This is a no indent paragraph.</p>

Or

.sectionbreak {margin:2em auto; text-align:center}

h2 + p, p.sectionbreak + p {text-indent:0}

Where the first paragraph which immediately follows an h2 tag,
or a paragraph defined as a section break,
will have an indent of 0

As in:
<h2>Chapter 69</h2>
<p>This is a no indent paragraph.</p>

<p class="sectionbreak">* * *</p>
<p>This is a no indent paragraph.</p>


I hope that helps!

Cheers,

[ghostyjack]

I normally use soothing like this:

<p class="newscene1">blah, blah, blah.</p>

<p>blah, blah, blah.</p>

<p>blah, blah, blah.</p>

With the CSS being:

p      {text-indent:1em;
         margin:0;}
.newscene1 {text-indent:0;
         margin-top:1em;}

This gives a default indent to all paragraphs and no space between the paragraphs of the scene. And "newscene1" is what I use for a scene break as it removes the indent and add a single line space from the previous paragraph.

[ghostyjack]

You beat me to it!

Both approaches work, just depends on what you prefer.

For the start of chapters, I tend to add another "newscene" entry I call "newscene2", this one had margin-top set to 2em instead of 1em. Thus providing a bit more gap to the chapter heading.

[Turtle91]

That thar is called "ninja typing skills"!!

[Alda]

Thanks you guys!

@Turtle91 - I presume your second code works just as well if I call it h1 instead of h2?

@ghostyjack - to make yours work, you would have to manually go into the code and assign each paragraph the "newscene" marker, no?

Also, is there a quick way to assign a class to a section break?

ps - This is such a great forum.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Alda

Thanks you guys!

@Turtle91 - I presume your second code works just as well if I call it h1 instead of h2?

@ghostyjack - to make yours work, you would have to manually go into the code and assign each paragraph the "newscene" marker, no?

Also, is there a quick way to assign a class to a section break?

ps - This is such a great forum.

Search and Replace: REGEX (a Normal mode might have problem because of the Stars)

<p>\*\s*\*\s*\*</p>
<p class="sectionbreak">* * *</p>

I used \s* (zero or more white space) between the stars
The REAL stars need to be escaped on search ONLY as they are special characters

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by Alda

@ghostyjack - to make yours work, you would have to manually go into the code and assign each paragraph the "newscene" marker, no?

The standard paragraph tag will always be indented with the code I showed above, so you only need to add the "newscene" classes when you want to have the paragraph behave differently.

[Alda]

Absolutely awesome. I now have it just the way I wanted. Thanks so much.

[phossler]

@Turtle91 -- I didn't know you could do that in CSS

.sectionbreak {margin:2em auto; text-align:center}

h2 + p, p.sectionbreak + p {text-indent:0}

It'll come in handy

Paul

[st_albert]

Kind of off topic for this forum, but keep in mind that some of these CSS constructs may not translate well to Kindle format via kindlegen (IIRC).

[Alda]

I did find that when trying to upload an ePub to the KDP platform. The workaround was to convert it first to .mobi using Calibre, then uploading again. That worked like a charm.