Creating a Website: The Missing Manual, 3rd Edition

Text Alignment and Spacing

CSS includes a great many properties that let you control how text appears on a web page. If you ever wondered how to indent paragraphs, space out lines, or center a title, these are the tools you need.

Table 6-2 has the details on all your alignment options.

Table 6-2. Alignment and spacing properties.

Property	Description	Common Values	Can Be Inherited?
text-align	Lines up text on one or both edges of a page.	left, right, center, justify.	Yes
text-indent	Indents the first line of text (typically in a paragraph).	A pixel value (indicating the amount to indent) or percentage of the width of the containing element.	Yes
margin	Sets the spacing around the outside of a block element (HTML Elements for Basic Text). To change the margin on just one side, use the similar properties marginbottom, margin-left, marginright, and margin-top.	A pixel value or percentage indicating the amount of space to add around the element.	No
padding	Sets the spacing around the inside of a block element. Has the same effect as “margin,” unless you have an element with a border or background color.	A pixel value or percentage indicating the amount of space to add around the element.	No
wordspacing	Sets the space between words	A pixel value or percentage.	Yes
letterspacing	Sets the space between letters.	A pixel value or percentage.	Yes
line-height	Sets the space between lines.	A pixel value or percentage. You can also use a multiple (for example, use 2 for double-spacing).	Yes
white-space	Tells the browser how to ...