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HTML How to Make a Website CSS: Cascading Style Sheets Style the Basic Elements

Aaron Graves
Aaron Graves
1,849 Points
Posted by Aaron Graves
Aaron Graves
1,849 Points

Center text with the margin property

I'm not sure how to center an element with the margin property

css/main.css 
a {
  text-decoration: none;
}

#wrapper {
  max-width: 940px;
  margin: 50%;
}
index.html 
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <title>Nick Pettit | Designer</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/normalize.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/main.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <header>
      <a href="index.html" id="logo">
        <h1>Nick Pettit</h1>
        <h2>Designer</h2>
      </a>
      <nav>
        <ul>
          <li><a href="index.html" class="selected">Portfolio</a></li>
          <li><a href="about.html">About</a></li>
          <li><a href="contact.html">Contact</a></li>
        </ul>
      </nav>
    </header>
    <div id="wrapper">
      <section>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-01.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-01.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Experimentation with color and texture.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-02.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-02.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Playing with blending modes in Photoshop.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-06.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-06.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Trying to create an 80's style of glows.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-09.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-09.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Drips created using Photoshop brushes.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
          <li>
            <a href="img/numbers-12.jpg">
              <img src="img/numbers-12.jpg" alt="">
              <p>Creating shapes using repetition.</p>
            </a>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </section>
      <footer>
        <a href="http://twitter.com/nickrp"><img src="img/twitter-wrap.png" alt="Twitter Logo"></a>
        <a href="http://facebook.com/nickpettit"><img src="img/facebook-wrap.png" alt="Facebook Logo"></a>
        <p>&copy; 2014 Nick Pettit.</p>
      </footer>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

3 Answers

Julie Myers
Julie Myers
7,627 Points
Julie Myers
Julie Myers
7,627 Points

Well, you don't center text with the margin property. The best way to center text is by using the text-align property. So, since you want to center text that is inside of your #wrapper div, just add the text-align property to your #wrapper rule like so:

#wrapper {
  max-width: 940px;
  margin: 50%;
  text-align: center;
}

For a bit more info go to these two web pages:

http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/pr_text_text-align.asp

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-align

Aaron Graves
Aaron Graves
1,849 Points
Aaron Graves
Aaron Graves
1,849 Points

Thanks guys. I actually googled it and found out that it was margin: 0 auto; Big duh moment. Thanks for answering guys.