On Wed, January 18, 2012 8:14 am, James Simmons wrote:
As far as blockquotes are concerned, while I agree that using them for things that are not actually quotes could qualify as tag abuse, it is one of the tags that the Kindle understands and <span> tags with margins are not.
I tend to be ambivalent about "tag abuse" for block quotes. In most cases, block-indented text really /is/ a quote, as it represents a source other than the primary voice of the author. Other times "it just works," so I do it anyway, and it's nowhere near as bad as using <p> for non-paragraphs. I do think that whenever anyone is committing practical tag abuse (because there are no other good options) a 'class' attribute should be added to indicate "just kidding, I'm doing this for display only"; that way it can be programmatically removed later when it is no longer needed. In any event, <blockquote> is a block tag so you would want to replace it with <div>, not a series of spans. If you're concerned about display on the pre-Fire Kindles, you might want to try <div class="notaquote" style="margin-left:2em">. KindleGen /might/ rewrite this to something the old Kindle's can use, but in any case by using a <div> your intent of indicating "a block of text that is somehow distinct from other blocks of text" should be satisfied, and that intent should be apparent on all devices, even old Kindles.