Vertically Align multi-line text inside a span - html

Question

I have spent countless hours yesterday and today to figure out how to do this. I cant believe CSS doesn't have an easy way to handle this.
Essentially, I have some text within a span class="name" whose length is not fixed. In certain instances, it can spill over to the next line. How do I vertically align this within my container.
More specifically, how do I vertically align "ABC Father And Sons Company LLC" within my container?
http://jsfiddle.net/D3L8S/
<div class="container">
<span class="name">ABC Father And Sons Company LLC </span>
Address
Hours
More
</div>
css classes
// CSS
.container {
background: #DDEBF0;
padding: 11px;
border: 1px solid #D2D2D2;
width: 380px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
height:18px;
line-height:18px;
display:inline-block;
}
.name {
width:200px;
float:left;
}
.addr, .hours, .more {
width:60px;
float:left;
}
If I add a negative top margin to "name" (margin-top:-8px), I can achieve this but it obviously messes up rendering for XYZ Company LLC
http://jsfiddle.net/FM4dA/
The solution should ideally be Cross-browser compatible (atleast ie8 should support it)
EDIT - I forgot to mention initially that my container width is fixed and cannot be changed.

Answer 1

Here is one way of doing it using inline blocks:
.container {
background: #DDEBF0;
padding: 11px;
border: 1px solid #D2D2D2;
width: 380px;
height: 50px;
line-height: 50px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
display:inline-block;
}
.name {
width:200px;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
line-height: 1;
}
.addr, .hours, .more {
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
line-height: 1;
}
First, make sure to leave enough vertical space for multi-line names, so on .container,
I used height: 50px and line-height: 50px.
However, you need to reset the line-height: 1 (or some suitable value) on the child elements otherwise the interline spacing will not be attractive.
Then, instead of floats, use display: inline-block and vertical-align: middle on the
child elements (.name, .addr, .hours, .more).
See demo at: http://jsfiddle.net/audetwebdesign/Wp84v/
Note: You may not need to specify the width on .addr, .hours, .more, so I let the
widths take on the shrink-to-fit value.

Answer 2

One way to vertically align div's contents is to use the vertical-align css property. But it works only on display:table-cell elements. So, wrap your container into a display:table div, and change the container display to display:table-cell.
Like this: http://jsfiddle.net/D3L8S/2/

Answer 3

Try this, It might help somebody
.name {
width:200px;
float:left;
margin-top:-8px;
word-wrap:break-word;
text-align: center;
}
DEMO

Answer 4

When you want to vertically center multiple lines, put the text into an inline block then pretend that the inline-block was a single line of text.
.container {
background: #DDEBF0;
padding: 11px;
border: 1px solid #D2D2D2;
width: 380px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
height: 18px;
line-height: 18px
display:inline-block;
}
.name {
width:200px;
float:left;
margin-top:-8px;
display: inline-block;
vertical-align: middle;
line-height: 14px;
}
NOTE:
Why you should add the line-height property ?
If you add height to an element , where exactly does the text inside of it lie? That is, if you have a block of text that is font-size: 10px (a theoretical height:10px) inside a container that is 60px where exactly is the text going to end up? Most surely at the top of the container, because the text can only position itself where the text flows, inside a height:10px space. But you can overcome that by using a line-height value the same height as the container, this way the text will take in the vertical-align property and align itself properly.