I've been searching this forum and changing settings for two hours to find a way to have a margin between text and edge of main body box for posts and pages... All the changes offered in this forum seem to change outside of the body box, not the inside, which has a different background color than the outside because the text wouldn't be visible enough if I used the outside background.

This is so frustrating! Why in the world do the default settings not have a basic margin between the text and the left edge of the body box?

And no I don't need the margin between text and left side of body box to be unique to specific pages, I need it for the whole website and I'm at my wit's end and ready to throw my laptop across the room!!!

Please tell me how to have space on the left margin between edge of body box and text... And please don't refer me to some other thread on this site. I have gone thru every last one of them and NONE of them solved my problem!!! So Frustrated!!!

Can you supply your url pointing to the issue. I'm not quite sure what you want, so an example would be helpful pointing to the text you want the margin for.

If I understand what you want there are two ways to do it.

To get the terminology right, the page has a header, middle and footer.
The middle has one or two left sidebars, a center area and one or two right sidebars
The center area is where the page text and posts show up and this is the area I think you mean.

You can add padding to the entire area (ATO->Style & edit CENTER COLUMN->Center column style)

or
You can add padding or a margin to the page/post blocks (ATO->Style POSTS & PAGES->POST Container)

Why in the world do the default settings not have a basic margin between the text and the left edge of the body box?

The center area is part of a table (it is a <td>) and you can not uses margins on a <td> element - you have to use 'padding. The default settings have 'padding' between the sides of the center column and the text:

Center column style
Style the center column here. The center column is the container for everything in the middle: All posts (including "page" posts) and the next/prev navigation.

Default: padding: 10px 15px;