Help:Useful styles

This page documents various CSS elements that are useful to know when working in the article and template namespaces. For information about how to use them, see:

CSS classes

• wikitable This class represents Wikipedia's favored style for data tables.
• toccolours This class gives the template borders and colors similar to that of the Table of Contents of a page. Do not use id="toc" instead of this, as it risk breaking some scripts. toccolours is used on most footer templates (for examples, {{Region}})
• messagebox standard-talk This class combination is used to style templates affected by WP:TS

Specific styles

• border-collapse:collapse This style will eliminate 3-d style borders created by the border attribute and collapse them in 1px wide borders. This property will override cellspacing! To define similar whitespace, use the border-spacing property (although it is not possible to have both border-spacing and border-collapse for the same table).

Moving stuff

• float:right and clear:right These styles are used to move a table to the right-hand side of the screen. Float right is equivalent to align="right" The clear code property makes it impossible for the movement to be blocked by another box or picture: the template will automatically move under it.

Margins and sizes

• margin:0 0 0.5em 1em; This style prevents text from running straight to the template by saving blank space. It should be used on boxes which are floated right (using float: right;).
  • margin:0 1em 0.5em 0; This performs the same function as the style directly above, but should be used for boxes which are floated left (using float: left;).
• margin:1em auto; This style is the proper way to center a footer or similar template. A 1em margin is added at the top and the bottomof the template.
• width:90%; 90% is a recommended width to allow some whitespace on each side of templates that would otherwise stretch across the text area, such as the aforementioned {{Region}} or {{Cabinet of Canada}}, to give two examples.

See also

• Wikipedia:Catalogue of CSS classes