[MacEachaidh]

I understand in principle how to use text boxes and background colours. I don't want to use text boxes in an epub, since I want the text still to be able to flow, but I'd like to emulate the look to some degree.

So: is there any way to have the background colour stretch margin to margin, even though the text in front of it is indented by, say, 1 em on both sides?
Also, to have the colour start maybe a line before the para text, without having to use clunky approaches like empty paragraphs?

I assume this would require making the colour a separate element from the paragraph, rather than a property of the para itself, but I don't know who to do that.

Thanks for any help.