Is it possible to indent within a Markdown block quote?

Question

It seems like indentations could be useful in a variety of circumstances, including formatting quotes of Scripture. For example, we're all familiar with how publishers often indent verses in Psalms and Proverbs.

Maybe it's just me, but IMO the following quote just doesn't look right without the second and fourth lines indented:

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

I checked the C.SE help page for markdown, and I already know about forcing newlines by adding trailing spaces. Is there a way to use Markdown to add indentations within block quotes?

Answer 1

With a little knowledge of HTML you can do what you are looking for:

Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
     and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
     and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

Here is what is exactly typed above:

> Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,  
     and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,  
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,  
     and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

Notice the double space at the end of each line. That is the markdown for a line break. You need that or the text will wrap and it will look weird with all those spaces.

So do this:

1. Type a line
2. Put two spaces at the end for a line break
3. Use   to insert a non-breaking space. You can insert as many as you want. I did five.
4. Repeat as necessary.

Answer 2

This is where the fact that SE is built for programmers comes in handy.

If you want to use preformatted text, the best thing to do is to use the code block syntax

That's five spaces before the line:

 This will turn out      just how I typed it.

That's how I usually quote poetry.

If your quoting you can do

This will appear as code!
    see the indent!

Answer 3

Um...

 Do you
       mean like this?

 >      Do you
 >            mean like this?