[RbnJrg]

Why don't use a negative indent? Something like:

.negindent {
   margin-left: 2em;
   text-indent: -2.0em;
}

and

<p class="negindent">162. —How do you do?<br/>—How do you do?</p>

It seems to work.



Regards
Rubén

EDIT: What are you working with? Epub2? Epub3? And of course always you have the choice of using the "float: left" property for the number. Just give the class a proper height for example:

.nfloat {
   float: left;
   height: 4em;
   background: khaki;  /* remove this */
}

and

<p><span class="nfloat">162. </span>—How do you do?<br/>—How do you do?<br/>—Please a coffe.</p>

Add also a proper right margin to the floated number.