How to align list items to leading margin?

Rob N 0
Viewed 22

This must be a dupe, but I've looked at a bunch of "list alignment" questions and I can't find it.

I want the list to align to the left/leading margin, but keep its text aligned when there is more than one line. It's the default behavior in the Pages word processor, for example:

See how the left side of the numbers are perfectly aligned with the word "Text" above.

Is there a way to do this without manually adding/subtracting a hard-coded amount of body padding to line it up? That will be brittle because it will depend on the font.

If I try it with HTML:

<p>Indented too much.</p>
<ol>
  <li>Bigfoot</li>
  <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
  <li>Chupacabras</li>    
</ol>

<p>With padding:0, numbers off to the left:</p>
<ol style='padding-left:0'>
  <li>Bigfoot</li>
  <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
  <li>Chupacabras<br/> Second line</li>    
</ol>

<p>With list-style-position:inside, second line not aligned.</p>
<ol style='list-style-position:inside;padding-left:0'>
  <li>Bigfoot</li>
  <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
  <li>Chupacabras <br/> Second line</li>    
</ol>
html-lists css html
2 Answers

I didn't see reference for this, but it seems like margin of 1em is correct.

body {
  padding: 20px;
}

ol {
  padding-left: 1em;
}
<body>

  <p>Text perfectly aligned</p>
  <ol>
    <li>Bigfoot</li>
    <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
    <li>Chupacabras<br>second line</li>
  </ol>



  <div style="font-size:24px">
    <p>Text perfectly aligned</p>
    <ol>
      <li>Bigfoot</li>
      <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
      <li>Chupacabras<br>second line</li>
    </ol>
  </div>


  <div style="font-size:8px">
    <p>Text perfectly aligned</p>
    <ol>
      <li>Bigfoot</li>
      <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
      <li>Chupacabras<br>second line</li>
    </ol>
  </div>

</body>

IT goldman0

user agent stylesheet sets padding-inline-start (40px in my browser).

It is little tricky - One option to get "perfect left align" is to set padding-inline-start value - same as the base size of the ol text.

padding-inline-start works better for RTL/LTR lists (One value for both VS "padding-left").

ol.big{
    font-size: 2rem;
    padding-inline-start: 2rem;
}

ol.small{
    font-size: 1rem;
    padding-inline-start: 1rem;
}
<h3>Hello</h3>
<ol class="big">
  <li>Bigfoot</li>
  <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
  <li>Chupacabras</li>   
  <li>Chupacabras</li> 
</ol>
<hr>
<ol class="small">
  <li>Bigfoot</li>
  <li>Loch Ness Monster</li>
  <li>Chupacabras</li>    
</ol>

For long lists (>10) it is even more tricky - one idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFXVJBzsMCA

Ezra Siton0
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