Put the following snippet in a well-form HTML JSP file: <div id="interface"> <form action="" name="advSearch" id="advSearch"> <div id="x"> <label> Enable </label> <input type="checkbox" id="y" name="y"/> </div> </form> </div> Format the JSP file, then you will see the indentations are all shifted to the left incorrectly. Removing the carriage returns around the label text, like <div id="interface"> <form action="" name="advSearch" id="advSearch"> <div id="x"> <label>Enable</label> <input type="checkbox" id="y" name="y"/> </div> </form> </div> and format again, the indentation is right. This is quite annoying for large JSP as one has to hunt down the cause.