[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Phylis Sophical

Thxs Ghit....That's exactly how I got it to work and all I needed to know.

<p><i>Come on in, baby take you coat off,</i><br />
<i>Come on in, baby take a load off</i><br />
<i>Come on in, baby shake the blues off</i><br />
<i>I’m gonna love that frown away</i></p>

Phylis:

I realize you're a newb, but those of us who know better shouldn't be giving you bad coding advice.

I understand that you want the lines to look like lyrics/poetry. You shouldn't be using "break," because not all readers will honor it, and generally, it's not considered "good coding," if you're interested in that. Try someting like this, which will also give you a hanging indent, when the line wraps (notice I didn't say, IF the line wraps--trust me, it will).

 
<p class="top2">Come on in, baby take you coat off,</p>
<p class="poem">Come on in, baby take a load off</p>
<p class="poem">Come on in, baby shake the blues off</p>
<p class="poem">I’m gonna love that frown away</p>

<p class="top2">Next stanza</p>
<p class="poem">and continue....</p>

I didn't add the italics, because obviously, that's the simple part. You can do that. The styling for this is:

p.top2
	{
	margin-top:2em;
	text-indent:0;
	margin-bottom:.5em;
	margin-left: 2em;
	text-indent: -2em;
	text-align:left;
	}

p.poem
	{
	margin-top:0;
	margin-right:0;
	margin-bottom:.5em;
	margin-left: 2em;
	text-indent: -2em;
	text-align:left;
	}

That should do it. And you won't have to worry about where breaks shan't work.

FWIW. I realize that this type of coding might be more trouble than you think it's worth, but with some regex and a few minutes of hand-work, it should give you a nice result.

Hitch