dedent option ------------- .. code-block:: First line Second line Third line Fourth line ReST has no fixed indent and only a change in indentation is significant not the amount [1]_. Thus, the following code inside the code block is not indent even it looks so with respect to the previous block. .. code-block:: First line Second line Third line Fourth line Having an option "fixates" the indent to be 3 spaces, thus the code inside the code block is indented by 4 spaces. .. code-block:: :class: dummy First line Second line Third line Fourth line The code has 6 spaces indent, minus 4 spaces dedent should yield a 2 space indented code in the output. .. code-block:: :dedent: 4 First line Second line Third line Fourth line Dedenting by zero, should not strip any spaces and be a no-op. .. note:: This can be used as an alternative to ``:class: dummy`` above, to fixate the ReST indentation of the block. .. code-block:: :dedent: 0 First line Second line Third line Fourth line Dedent without argument should autostrip common whitespace at the beginning. .. code-block:: :dedent: First line Second line Third line Fourth line .. [1] https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#indentation