The opposite of indent

May 12, 2004 8:45 PM

The opposite of indent is __________:
A. unindent
B. outdent
C. dedent
D. I can locate no firm etymological basis for any of the above

Err...Option A should go here, though "outdent" produces the most hits on Google. Unfortunately, Google also produces 278,000 hits for "virii", so it clearly cannot be relied upon as an arbiter of linguistic matters.

posted by Danelope to writing & language (26 comments total)

I use the term exdent. But doubt it's correct... but as an antithesis to indent, it just feels right.

Languagehat?
posted by silusGROK at 9:21 PM on May 12, 2004

I say unindented, because that is simply saying that it is not indented, which seems to me the only option that makes any sense. Something is either indented or not, isn't it? It can't be "outdented," since that means it's just regular text, and everything else is indented. Right?
posted by Hildago at 9:26 PM on May 12, 2004

There's semantics involved here. What do you mean by 'opposite'?

Text is only indented relative to other things. Do you mean relative to other text or to a margin line? Depending on your answer to that, both B and C are right.

Also option A is like asking: Is the opposite of love, hate? Or is it just not-loving?
posted by vacapinta at 9:37 PM on May 12, 2004

Programmers, who probably use indentation more than anyone else, often avoid the issue by using a more general expression: "indent to level n", where n >= 0.

So, the opposite of "indent" is clearly "decrement the indentation level."
posted by Galvatron at 9:38 PM on May 12, 2004

Well, if you want the opposite of "indented" then you could use something like left-justified, i think there's a more technical publishing term for that, but it's escaping me at the moment.

If you are looking for the opposite of the verb "to indent" then:
1) the opposite doesn't exist, you simply don't do it. "not-indenting" isn't an active process, it just happens, thus it doesn't require its own word.
2) if you've already done it, and you are undoing it, then the word you're looking for is "delete" or "remove", if you must, "unindent" but i don't think that's a real word.
3) if you are talking about pushing the text to the left of the page, there probably isn't a single word for that, as it is a multi-step process involving changing the margins and such.

[on preview: what Hidalgo and vacapinta said, kind of]
posted by rorycberger at 9:45 PM on May 12, 2004

is this just curiosity, or are you trying to use it in a specific context? could you put it into a sentence? (other than "the opposite...")
posted by rorycberger at 9:46 PM on May 12, 2004

I say "dedent", but that's probably because Python uses "dedent".
posted by kenko at 10:06 PM on May 12, 2004

By "the opposite", I mean the physical act of removing existing indentation from a document. One may indent a paragraph or a block of code, and one may then reverse the process through similar means. There are variety of descriptions for this act, but I was curious about the existence of a single word describing the removal of indentation, and the validity of the words I managed to locate.

As Galvatron stated above, there can be multiple levels of indentation, so "left-justify" is an inappropriate term, as the resulting text may not actually appear on the left margin of a page.

Regarding usage:

"The client wants us to change the icon to cornflower blue, add white space beneath each subheader, and [insert word] all paragraphs containing testimonials."

"To make your source code more readable, you should indent each table cell and its content and [insert word] the <tr> tags. This provides a more obvious division."
posted by Danelope at 10:15 PM on May 12, 2004

[insert word] all paragraphs containing testimonials.

"remove the indentation from".
posted by kindall at 10:19 PM on May 12, 2004

flush left.

but this (and a good amount of the commentary above) assumes you are speaking of typography. honestly, my first thought of "indent" is to make a dent in something.

very few words have exact opposites; language is not like mathematics. you can't always have the negative of a thing.
posted by _sirmissalot_ at 10:31 PM on May 12, 2004

coin a new word.

i vote for "blister", as in "I need those documents blistered by tommorow, ok?"
posted by fishfucker at 12:18 AM on May 13, 2004

I always say flush left.

On Preivew
oops, missed _sirmissalot_'s comment, that'll teach me to answer before I read the other answers
posted by Grod at 2:19 AM on May 13, 2004

I nominate 'disindent'.
posted by mischief at 3:11 AM on May 13, 2004

Antident?
posted by carter at 3:37 AM on May 13, 2004

Arthurdent.
posted by chrismear at 3:49 AM on May 13, 2004

hang.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:52 AM on May 13, 2004

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned "deindent" (which would be my first choice) yet.
posted by fvw at 6:04 AM on May 13, 2004

"Block" is what we say where I work, as in "This should be a blocked paragraph, as opposed to an indented one." When we are feeling facetious (which is practically all the time), we say "deindenture."
posted by JanetLand at 6:21 AM on May 13, 2004

andrew cooke++

This here line on a block of text that
sticks out from the rest of it was
always called a hang, as part of
a "hanging indent" at most major
daily classified advertising depts.
E.O.E.


although I love "deindenture." The downside is that I can forsee that one getting around to the marketing department, or worse -- management -- and becoming vernacular.
posted by mimi at 6:33 AM on May 13, 2004

Aaargh, it ate my formatting.
Imagine every line other than the first one aligned under the H in "here."

Tangent: Is there a technical word for the string of punctuation that represent swears in comic strips, eg:
"$*&(^@!!!!, It ate my formatting."
posted by mimi at 6:35 AM on May 13, 2004

Hyphenate:

De-indent.

More easily understood.
posted by Blue Stone at 9:10 AM on May 13, 2004

"$*&(^@!!!!, It ate my formatting."

If there isn't a word, there should be, and it should be derived from "Q-Bert."
posted by cortex at 9:59 AM on May 13, 2004

exdent was the function name used when I ran across this in emacs 15 years ago...
posted by plinth at 10:01 AM on May 13, 2004

BBEdit, CodeWarrior, Project Builder, and vi all use "shift left" and "shift right" to describe the add-one-level-of-indent and remove-one-level-of-indent operations. In fact, I can't think of a programmer-oriented text editor I've used that doesn't offer those operations under those names.
posted by Mars Saxman at 10:51 AM on May 13, 2004

i'm with andrew cooke, as far as I understood the question anyway. The opposite of indenting, to me, means not justifying left, but actually starting the first line at a point further left than the rest of the paragraph...and that's a hanging indent.
posted by bingo at 12:12 PM on May 13, 2004

I use "unindent."
posted by languagehat at 7:18 PM on May 13, 2004