Increase indentation of a paragraph

Question

I am using the moderncv package for making my resume however I am new to LaTeX, so please forgive me if this has been repeated (I did search) or is too stupid!

How do I increase the indent of a paragraph such that the entire paragraph is indented and not the first line only. In other words, try pasting a paragraph in OpenOffice and then choose Increase indent. Notice how the entire paragraph is indented.

I want this:

Heading

a leo. Pellentesque sapien dui, facilisis et sollicitudin et, ullamcorper vel massa. Pellentesque vulputate placerat sapien, et volutpat odio elementum eget. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per

Where: Heading is a section and a leo is cvitem.

EDIT: As asked:

\section{Foo} \cvitem{}{Para-Foo}

Now I want Para-Foo to be indented as the way I have described...

Answer 1

From the moderncv.cls code it appears that cvitem uses the lengths hintscolumnwidth and maincolumnwidth to control the spacing on the left and the width of the text. So, one way to do it would be to define a new command \MyCvItem which takes an optional first parameter allowing you to specify the indent amount. If the indent amount is not given, it defaults to 0.0pt.

\documentclass{moderncv}
\moderncvtheme[blue]{casual} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{layout}

\firstname{Joey}
\familyname{TeXUser}

\newcommand*{\MyCvItem}[3][0.0pt]{%
    \addtolength{\hintscolumnwidth}{#1}% Adjust settings
    \addtolength{\maincolumnwidth}{-#1}%
    \cvitem{#2}{#3}%
    \addtolength{\hintscolumnwidth}{-#1}% Restore settings
    \addtolength{\maincolumnwidth}{#1}%
}%


\begin{document}\layout
\maketitle

\section{Heading}
\MyCvItem{a leo. }{% No indent specified
\textbf{Regular:} Pellentesque sapien dui, facilisis et sollicitudin et, ullamcorper vel massa. Pellentesque vulputate placerat sapien, et volutpat odio elementum eget. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per
}

\textcolor{blue}{
\MyCvItem[1.0cm]{a leo. }{% Note optional indent amount specified
\textbf{Indented:} Pellentesque sapien dui, facilisis et sollicitudin et, ullamcorper vel massa. Pellentesque vulputate placerat sapien, et volutpat odio elementum eget. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per
}}
\MyCvItem{a leo. }{% No indent specified -- ensure it is back to normal
\textbf{Regular:} Pellentesque sapien dui, facilisis et sollicitudin et, ullamcorper vel massa. Pellentesque vulputate placerat sapien, et volutpat odio elementum eget. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per
}
\end{document}