<pre> is just html-ese for preformatted text.

[Usually] any extra whitespace [is] stripped out by the browser. The one exception to this rule is the prefromatted text tab <PRE>. Any whitespace that you put into text surrounded by the <PRE> and </PRE> tags is retained in the final output... you can format the text the way you want it to look, and it will be presented that way.

The catch is that preformatted text is usually displayed... in a monospaced font such as Courier.

   
   while the Courier font is just not
   the best to be had from the lot
   it's still nice to be able
   to gin up a table
   or create a poem that's hot 
 
 
 



  [or not]