How to align two columns of text in CSS

Question

I'm having some trouble lining up some text. I need two columns, one with numbers and one with text, like so:

1 Entry one
2 Entry two
3 Entry three
4 Entry five
5 Entry six

The left column is Georgia and the right column is Arial (slightly different font sizes). I could have a container div for each row and absolutely position the number and text paragraphs to be at the top or bottom of these, which works fine. The problem is this means I have to give each row a fixed height so that it displays properly, which causes a problem if the text needs to flow onto more than one line (which it may well do as the text entries are dynamic).

I want to do this without using a table, and without using absolute positioning so that the individual text entries can span over more than one line (and is cross-browser compatible).

Answer 1

You should just use an appropriately styled ol element, something like this:

See: http://jsfiddle.net/tPjQR/

If you want to have different styles on the number versus the list content, you'll need to wrap the content of each li in something like a span. There just isn't a better way.

ol {
    font-family: Georgia, serif;
}
ol span {
    font-family: Arial, sans-serif;
    font-size: 17px
}
<ol>
    <li><span>Entry one</span></li>
    <li><span>Entry two</span></li>
    <li><span>Entry three</span></li>
    <li><span>Entry five</span></li>
    <li><span>Entry six</span></li>
    <li><span>Entry Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long Long</span></li>
</ol>

Answer 2

As per my comment, I think the best element for the job is an ordered list.

ol {
   font-family: georgia, serif;
   font-size: 16px;
   font-weight: bold;
}
ol li span {
   font-family: arial, sans-serif;
   font-weight: normal;
   font-size: 12px;
}

<ol>
  <li><span>Entry one<br>text on another line</span></li>
  <li><span>Entry two</span></li>
  <li><span>Entry three</span></li>
  <li><span>Entry five</span></li>
  <li><span>Entry six</span></li>
</ol>

With the span to allow changing of font-family between the list "bullets" and the content within, these could be divs if you have block content.