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Block formatting elements

There are three block formatting elements: ADDRESS, BLOCKQUOTE and PRE.

The ADDRESS element is used to format postal addresses, signatures, email addresses and information of this type. The content is generally displayed in an italic font, indented or right justified. This element is often added at the bottom of a document giving the author and date that the document was last changed, for example:

  <ADDRESS>
    Andrew Ford ([email protected]), 28 October 1994
  </ADDRESS>

This would be displayed as:

Andrew Ford ([email protected]), 28 October 1994

The BLOCKQUOTE element is used for including quotations in a document. A new paragraph is started and text is indented both left and right. The browser may display this text in a different font.

Sections of preformatted text can be included in HTML documents by using the PRE element. These are displayed in a fixed-width font and can be useful when the formatting of your information is critical but HTML does not provide the facilities to format your information as you want. An example is tabular material (until HTML version 3.0 is in widespread use). This is illustrated in the following example:

    <TITLE>Example of preformatted text</TITLE>

    <H1>Seed Sowing Times in the United Kingdom</H1>

    <PRE>
      Name                     Month
      ------------
      Acanthus mollis          Apr - May
      Dianthus neglectus       Apr
      Helleborus orientalis    May - Jun
      Papaver somniferum       Apr - May
    </PRE>

which would be displayed as:

Seed Sowing Times in the United Kingdom

  Name                     Month
  -----------------------------------
  Acanthus mollis          Apr - May
  Dianthus neglectus       Apr
  Helleborus orientalis    May - Jun
  Papaver somniferum       Apr - May

Between the <PRE> and </PRE> tags line boundaries are respected. Anchors and character formatting are allowed and tab characters expand to one or more spaces such that the next character appears on a character position that is a multiple of eight. All text formatted using the PRE element will be displayed by browsers in a typewriter font. The <PRE> tag can take one optional attribute, WIDTH, which defines the width of the text in characters.

When using <PRE> put the matching </PRE> at the start of a line, since an extra blank line may be inserted if there are spaces before it.

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Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.