Pre-formatted Text
Sometimes you don't want a block of text to be filled and justified like a
paragraph. Sometimes you may want to keep all the spaces and returns
exactly as they are, as in a table like this, where you want everything to
properly display in columns:
Date Holiday
Oct 31 Halloween
Dec 25 Christmas
Jan 1 New Year's Day
To do this use the <pre> </pre> tag.
This is the same text, without using the tag for pre-formatted
text:
Date Holiday
Oct 31 Halloween
Dec 25 Christmas
Jan 1 New Year's Day
Using pre-formatted text tags is an easy way to display large tables
like the spreadsheet below:.
1995 Shipments From Southern Ports (tonnes)
FRUIT Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Bananas 85 71 105 89 92 110 96 84 72 75 79 84
Grapes 17 19 16 11 12 9 8 9 12 14 17 16
Oranges 501 423 440 372 420 432 490 510 522 503 488 471
Figs 1 1 2 3 3 2 3 1 - - - 2
Dates 2 - - 2 3 3 2 2 3 2 1 1
Lemons 11 8 9 10 11 13 11 9 8 7 6 9
Grapefruit 105 89 92 110 96 84 72 75 79 84 93 101
Using pre-formatted text is an easy way to display a table in HTML.
Just insert a <pre> before the table text and a
</pre> after it.
You should not use pre-formatted text all the time though. It may seem
like an easy way to put text files onto the world wide web but when you
view the page in a graphical browser (such as Netscape) the page will be
in a different font and not look very good. It's more worthwhile to
actually learn how to use html and then only use pre-formatted text when
you have to.
![[PayPal]](https://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Icons/paypal2.gif){kind=icon}
