css negative indent with 'tab' in between

I understand how negative indent works with CSS, but my question is, is there a way to have a kind of 'tab' in between the beginning of the negative indent and the rest of the text?

What I am trying to accomplish is the same look as in http://copyrighter.ru/canada/test.htm - please have a look at paragraphs starting from [6].

Notice that [6] is moved to the left of the line, while the rest of it looks like a neat square paragraph.

I am currently doing it with two divs.

It looks exactly the way I want it to look, but when I copy the text into MS Word, the copied text is a开发者_如何转开发ll messed up.

I am trying to figure out if there is an easier way to accomplish the same task.

Try to put numbers into SPANs having "absolute" positions. Something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/WvU7X/

However, I guess it won't look exactly the same after pasting the text into Word.

Instead of using DIVs, separate the elements with tags, then give them the attribute "display: inline-block;". This will allow them to have padding / margin applied to them while still appearing inline.

Note that for IE7 and thereabouts, inline-block does not work properly. Instead you have to use a combination: "display: inline; zoom: 1;". Then go about your padding and margin business.

The use of span tags will allow you to copy / paste into Word with less damage than divs.