<blockquote> tags were designed to indent lengthy excerpts or quotations - the kind college freshmen use to stre-e-etch their term papers. There might be a few occasions when you'll use these tags for their intended purpose, but unless you're putting your dissertation online, you'll probably just use them to create margins.

Blockquotes are dead easy. The HTML looks like this:

<blockquote>
You want the truth, huh? Last time someone asked me for the truth, I ended up on a Greyhound for Buffalo.
</blockquote>

And the paragraph appears like this:

You want the truth, huh? Last time someone asked me for the truth, I ended up on a Greyhound for Buffalo.

Unless you tell it to do otherwise, the text on your Web page will stretch the entire width of the browser window. And depending on the size of the text (usually set by the reader) there may be too many words per line to read comfortably. (The human eye can read the length of about two alphabets - 52 characters - and still find its way to the next line. If the line's much longer, the eye loses its place)

The <blockquote> tag is one way to create margins, limiting the length of your lines and generally improving readability. With that in mind, note how much better the second paragraph looks:

Without blockquote:

Disgusted, he stepped out of the sauna. He'd used portable toilets in minimart parking lots that were hotter than this. Oh, sure, there'd been some pretty bad days since he left the ranch, but only this one could begin to compare with the day he scattered a trailer-load of calves over seven miles of county road. That damn freckle-faced kid said he'd latched the gate. Christ, what a mess that was.

With blockquote:

Disgusted, he stepped out of the sauna. He'd used portable toilets in minimart parking lots that were hotter than this. Oh, sure, there'd been some pretty bad days since he left the ranch, but only this one could begin to compare with the day he scattered a trailer-load of calves over seven miles of county road. That damn freckle-faced kid said he'd latched the gate. Christ, what a mess that was.

Boy, you make a little mistake and everyone's got to be neighborly and come out to help clean up the mess.... More like revel in his mistake. He could hardly call himself a cowboy after that little episode. His dad always said a man who can't shut a gate has no business around livestock - and he was probably right. It'd do him good to get away from that old man, and maybe the ad in the paper would be what finally released him from the mountain.

WANTED: Production assistant at Web site for hip cattle aficionados. Must be proficient in HTML and knowledgeable about bovine-related topics.

All he really needed to do was set up that old laptop his uncle bought him when he finished college. He hadn't used it much, but he still carried it underneath the seat of the beat-up Chevrolet his dad loaned him for work.