Space Inside Block-Level Elements

You can affect the space inside a block-level element by changing the amount of space between letters, words, lines, or paragraphs and by varying the alignment of text. Six properties help you influence space inside paragraphs:

• text-align

• text-indent

• line-height

• word-spacing

• letter-spacing

• vertical-align

These, plus the font properties discussed in Chapter 5, give you significant amount of control over your document's appearance.

Among these six properties, text-align, text-indent, and line-height are used most often because they are the primary means of expressing the character of the text and of safeguarding readability. The other three, word-spacing, letter-spacing, and vertical-align, are usually used only to achieve special, localized effects. In the following sections, we discuss each of the six properties.