Spacing between elements

Question

I'm a complete begginer in CSS and HTML and I'm building my first basic page for training.

What I want do do now is have spacing between two elements without using <br>. Currently I'm using this:

.formClear {
  clear:left;
  height:25px;
}

It works for spacing but do you this a correct way to do it? Would lineheight work better?

line-height: 20px; 

What are your suggestions? Please remember I'm starting to learn :)

Thank you!

Answer 1

It depends on what exactly you want to accomplish. Let's assume you have this structure:

<p style="width:400px;">
    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu. In enim justo, rhoncus ut, imperdiet a, venenatis vitae, justo. Nullam dictum felis eu pede mollis pretium. Integer tincidunt. Cras dapibus. Vivamus elementum semper nisi. Aenean vulputate eleifend tellus. Aenean leo ligula, porttitor eu, consequat vitae, eleifend ac, enim. Aliquam lorem ante, dapibus in, viverra quis, feugiat a, tellus. Phasellus viverra nulla ut metus varius laoreet.
</p>

If you want the space between the single lines to be bigger, you should increase

line-height

If you want the space at the end to be bigger, you should increase

margin-bottom

If you want the space at the end to be bigger, but have the background fill the space (or the border around the space) use

padding-bottom

Of course, there are also the corresponding values for space on the top:

padding-top
margin-top

Some examples:

<p style="line-height: 30px; width: 300px; border: 1px solid black;">
     Space between single lines 
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
     Space between single lines
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 30px; width: 300px; border: 1px solid black;">
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
     Space at the bottom, outside of the border
</p>
<p style="padding-bottom: 30px; width: 300px; border: 1px solid black;">
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
     Space at the bottom, inside of the border
</p>

here you can see this code in action: http://jsfiddle.net/ramsesoriginal/H7qxd/

Of course you should put your styles in a separate stylesheet, the inline code was just to show the effect.

here you have a little schematic demonstration of what which value affects:

                                   line-height
           content                 +
                                   |      padding-bottom
                  <----------------+      +
           content                        |    border-bottom
                                          |    +
                                          |    |
        +-------------+<------------------+    |       margin-bottom
                                               |       +
     +===================+ <-------------------+       |
                                                       |
  +-------------------------+ <------------------------+

Answer 2

If you want vertical spacing between elements, use a margin.

Don't add extra elements if you don't need to.

Answer 3

You do not need to create an element like the < br > tag, or any other spacer tag. What you should do is apply a style to the element that needs spacing around it.

Let's say the element you want to have space around is a DIV tag called "myelement".

<div class="myelement">
    I am content that needs spacing around it!
</div>

This is the style you would need to use.

 .myelement {
  clear:left;
  height:25px;
  margin: 20px;  // See below for explanation of this
 }

This is the style you can use to better understand CSS for beginners

.myelement {
  clear:left;
  height:25px;
  margin-top:20px;
  margin-right:20px;
  margin-bottom:20px;
  margin-left:20px;
 }

Also, avoid using the height: CSS property until you know what you are doing. You will run into some issues when using height that are harder to troubleshoot as a beginner.

Answer 4

In general we use margins on one of the elements, not spacer elements.

Answer 5

Use a margin to space around an element.

.box {
        margin: top right bottom left;
 }

.box {
        margin: 10px 5px 10px 5px;
}

This adds space outside of the element. So background colours, borders etc will not be included.

If you want to add spacing within an element use padding instead. It can be called in the same way as above.