That's an incorrect way of thinking about it, however. The <pre> tag is meant to hold other things within it like a DIV tag. Now, if you've supported the CSS property "white-space" that allows for text to be preformatted, then that's cool: white-space: pre;
<span><div><pre><p> and a few other tags are meant to hold links and other things within them.
If you support padding and text-indent, you might be able to try this:
Code:
<html>
<head>
<style>
p
{
text-indent:-30px;
padding-left:30px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p>Curabitur gravida imperdiet nunc. Vestibulum elementum, velit id porttitor viverra, mi dolor suscipit eros, id consequat justo magna a ante. Maecenas varius eleifend nunc. Cras sed tortor. Phasellus dignissim, erat sit amet ullamcorper vehicula, lorem mi faucibus sapien, eget imperdiet ligula odio nec est. Vivamus venenatis, velit in interdum blandit, ligula mi pulvinar leo, at mollis purus magna fermentum mauris. Phasellus et purus. Suspendisse potenti. Aenean egestas consectetuer enim. Morbi elit justo, scelerisque lobortis, ornare ac, tincidunt eget, orci. Mauris faucibus ornare sem. Praesent nisi arcu, malesuada non, nonummy sit amet, sollicitudin ac, elit. Mauris nec libero id lectus porta tincidunt. Morbi purus est, gravida eget, cursus ut, ultricies quis, sapien.</p>
</body>
</html>
Which produces a very nice hanging indent (of 30px anyway).