How to center paragraph vertically and horizontall

Question

So I have been working on my first website, and I'm having lots of fun doing it.

However, I have found it very difficult to achieve centering a paragraph (spanning more than one line) vertically and horizontally inside of it's div container.

The div has a proportional width (96%), and it is not set by pixels. Also, the paragraph has a set amount of padding (ex: 20px top and bottom).

Is there a trick to center vertically and horizontally in this situation?

Thanks a bunch!

Answer 1

You could have simply used text-align: center; on your div.

Answer 2

From you 2 examples:

a single container inside a sized box:

you can use a pseudo to vertical-align pseudo and inside boxe aside each others DEMO

.holder {
    width: 96%;
    height: 400px;
    border: 1px solid black;
    text-align:center;
}
.holder:before {
    content:'';
    display:inline-block;
    height:100%;
    vertical-align:middle;
}
.holder p {
    display:inline-block;
    vertical-align:middle;
    width: 70%;
    margin: 20% auto;
    text-align:left;
}

A single or several boxes inside a sized box:

you can use display:table-cell; DEMO

.holder {
    width: 96%;
    height: 400px;
    border: 1px solid black;
    display:table-cell;/* it will expand if content grows oversized */
    vertical-align:middle;
}
.holder p {
    width: 70%;
    margin: 10px auto;
}
.holder div {
    width: 70%;
    margin: 10px auto;
}

Answer 3

See this fiddle - http://jsfiddle.net/zv2Pu/1/

I have centered p both horizontally and vertically within the div container.

Hope this helps!