440

Within an unordered list:

<li><span></span> The lazy dog.</li>
<li><span>AND</span> The lazy cat.</li>
<li><span>OR</span> The active goldfish.</li>

Adding a class or style attribute is permitted but padding the text and adding or changing tags is not allowed.

The page is rendering with Courier New.

Goal is to have text after span lined up.

    The lazy dog.
AND The lazy cat.
OR  The active goldfish.

Justification of the "OR" is unimportant.

The lazy animal text may be wrapped in an additional element but I'll have to double check.

Improve this question
0

11 Answers 11

Reset to default
610

In an ideal world you'd achieve this simply using the following css

<style type="text/css">

span {
  display: inline-block;
  width: 50px;
}

</style>

This works on all browsers apart from FF2 and below.

Firefox 2 and lower don't support this value. You can use -moz-inline-box, but be aware that it's not the same as inline-block, and it may not work as you expect in some situations.

Quote taken from quirksmode

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    @NicholasPickering .. how about wkhtmltopdf?
    – codeinthehole
    Commented May 2, 2013 at 14:03
  • Hm, not sure. It's just a minor setback. Ended up having to use tables to get the desired effect.
    – Nick Pickering
    Commented May 2, 2013 at 14:10
  • Well, I can recommend wkhtmltopdf if you ever need something that is CSS3 compliant.
    – codeinthehole
    Commented May 3, 2013 at 14:39
  • 8
    Meanwhile, 10 years later, this is definitely the way to go.
    – vog
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 7:49
449 

ul {
  list-style-type: none;
  padding-left: 0px;
}

ul li span {
  float: left;
  width: 40px;
}
<ul>
  <li><span></span> The lazy dog.</li>
  <li><span>AND</span> The lazy cat.</li>
  <li><span>OR</span> The active goldfish.</li>
</ul>

Like Eoin said, you need to put a non-breaking space into your "empty" spans, but you can't assign a width to an inline element, only padding/margin so you'll need to make it float so that you can give it a width.

For a jsfiddle example, see http://jsfiddle.net/laurensrietveld/JZ2Lg/

Improve this answer
8
  • 1
    <span> is an inline element by default - and floating it won't give it a width.
    – codeinthehole
    Commented Nov 2, 2008 at 23:14
  • 56
    The float property generates a "block box" which does have a width.
    – Stephen Caldwell
    Commented Nov 2, 2008 at 23:23
  • 96
    Should it be diplay: inline-block; width: 32px; will do in most modern browsers.
    – Paulo Bueno
    Commented Jan 9, 2012 at 18:18
  • 2
    @Randy Marsh - no, the width property only has an effect because the float property changes the element to a block display, as Stephen Caldwell describes above.
    – codeinthehole
    Commented Mar 9, 2012 at 18:44
  • 15
    @PauloBueno can you change diplay to read display, BTW, it works for me. thanks
    – basarat
    Commented Aug 22, 2013 at 3:10
19

Unfortunately inline elements (or elements having display:inline) ignore the width property. You should use floating divs instead:

<style type="text/css">
div.f1 { float: left; width: 20px; }
div.f2 { float: left; }
div.f3 { clear: both; }
</style>

<div class="f1"></div><div class="f2">The Lazy dog</div><div class="f3"></div>
<div class="f1">AND</div><div class="f2">The Lazy cat</div><div class="f3"></div>
<div class="f1">OR</div><div class="f2">The active goldfish</div><div class="f3"></div>

Now I see you need to use spans and lists, so we need to rewrite this a little bit:

<html><head>
<style type="text/css">
        span.f1 { display: block; float: left; clear: left; width: 60px; }
    li { list-style-type: none; }
    </style>

</head><body>
<ul>
<li><span class="f1">&nbsp;</span>The lazy dog.</li>
<li><span class="f1">AND</span> The lazy cat.</li>
<li><span class="f1">OR</span> The active goldfish.</li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
Improve this answer
2
  • 3
    That's a great solution. Floating divs mimic the intended behavior of spans as they line up horizontally. It's important to remember the clear:both line break. It's a great way to avoid tables in this context.
    – artur
    Commented Feb 11, 2010 at 16:22
  • I don't understand, button is inline or inline-block element, why "width" will apply to it? Button seems like a inline element right? Is there any doc showing the default "display" properties of all html element?
    – Sam YC
    Commented Apr 25, 2014 at 8:32
16

The <span> tag will need to be set to display:block as it is an inline element and will ignore width.

so:

<style type="text/css"> span { width: 50px; display: block; } </style>

and then:

<li><span>&nbsp;</span>something</li>
<li><span>AND</span>something else</li>
Improve this answer
2
  • No, I don't think this works. "something" goes to the next line. And there is a missing "<"
    – user1537366
    Commented Feb 8, 2015 at 11:59
  • As I said, it does NOT work! Check jsfiddle.net/m156a0qp out. Also, it is never good to meddle with the CSS of all span elements!
    – user1537366
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 11:03
13

Using HTML 5.0, it is possible to fix width of text block using <span> or <div>.

enter image description here

For <span>, what is important is to add following CCS line

display: inline-block;

For your empty <span> what is important is to add &nbsp; space.

My code is following

body
	{
	font-family: Arial;
	font-size:20px;
	}

div
	{
	width:200px;
	font-size:80px;
	background-color: lime;
	}
div span
	{
	display:block;
	width:200px;
	background-color: lime;
	}

ul li span
	{
	display: inline-block;
	width: 80px;
	background-color: yellow;
	}
span.tab
	{
	display: inline-block;
	width: 80px;
	background-color: yellow;
	}
&lt;DIV&gt;

<div class='test'>ABCDEF</div>

&lt;SPAN&gt;

<div>
    <span class='test'>ABCDEF</span>
</div

<br>

<ul>
  <li><span class='tab'>&nbsp;</span> The lazy dog.</li>
  <li><span class='tab'>AND</span> The lazy cat.</li>
  <li><span class='tab'>OR</span> The active goldfish.</li>
</ul>

PS: I have defined tab class because ul li span CSS selector is not working on my PC !

Improve this answer
0
4 
<style type="text/css">

span {
  position:absolute;
  width: 50px;
}

</style>

You can do this method for assigning width for inline elements

Improve this answer
2

People span in this case cant be a block element because rest of the text in between li elements will go down. Also using float is very bad idea because you will need to set width for whole li element and this width will need to be the same as width of whole ul element or other container.

Try something like this in HTML:

<li><span></span><strong>The</strong> lazy dog.</li>
<li><span>AND</span> <strong>The</strong> lazy cat.</li>
<li><span>OR</span>  <strong>The</strong> active goldfish.</li>

and in the CSS:

li {position:relative;padding-left:80px;} // 80px or something else
li span {position:absolute;top:0;left:0;}
li strong {color:red;} // red or else

So, when the li element is relative you format the span element to be as absolute and at the top:0;left:0; so it stays upper left and you set the padding-left (or: padding:0px 0px 0px 80px;) to set this free space for span element.

It should work better for simple cases.

Improve this answer
1

try this 

> <span class="input-group-addon" style="padding-left:6%;
> padding-right:6%; width:150px; overflow: auto;">
Improve this answer
0

You can do it using a table, but it is not pure CSS.

<style>
ul{
    text-indent: 40px;
}

li{
    list-style-type: none;
    padding: 0;
}

span{
    color: #ff0000;
    position: relative;
    left: -40px;
}
</style>


<ul>
<span></span><li>The lazy dog.</li>
<span>AND</span><li>The lazy cat.</li>
<span>OR</span><li>The active goldfish.</li>
</ul>

Note that it doesn't display exactly like you want, because it switches line on each option. However, I hope that this helps you come closer to the answer.

Improve this answer
0
-1

Well, there's always the brute force method:

<li><pre>    The lazy dog.</pre></li>
<li><pre>AND The lazy cat.</pre></li>
<li><pre>OR  The active goldfish.</pre></li>

Or is that what you meant by "padding" the text? That's an ambiguous work in this context.

This sounds kind of like a homework question. I hope you're not trying to get us to do your homework for you?

Improve this answer
-1 

ul {
	list-style-type: none;
	padding-left: 0px;
}

ul li span { 
	float: left;
	width: 40px;
}
<ul>
    <li><span></span> The lazy dog.</li>
    <li><span>AND</span> The lazy cat.</li>
    <li><span>OR</span> The active goldfish.</li>
</ul>

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.