my css for blockquote has the with of it set to auto so if I blockquote a small sentence like:

Contact under construction

or something the blockquote should cange its width to fit snuggly against the words depending on the amount of padding used.

But its not doing that.

Any help?

I realize i could just use a div section that looks the same but when i add new content i want to be able to use blockquote not < div id="blah"> < /div >

A blockquote is used at the name implies - to block QUOTES, or similar text where you want the formatting to be unchanged. It is not appropriate to replace a div with a blockquote for an entire site's content.

I meant replace blockquote with div. And its not a sites content.

Just a sentence or 2 on a page.

There's no reason to set the width to auto anyway. Without a defined width the width will only be as wide as it needs to be... plus your padding.