Can someone explain why line-height can affect the width in CSS?

Can you explain how the line-height property functions in CSS? I have noticed that when I set the line-height to be equal or less than the font size, it causes layout width issues. You can view an example of this problem on a jsFiddle here.

Currently, my font-size is 14px and the line height is also 14px. However, changing the line-height to 15px or higher resolves the issue. Shouldn't the line-height only affect the height and not interfere with the width?

Please refer to the image below where you can see that the #wrap has a width of 300px. Due to the line height, two divs with a width of 150px each do not fit into it properly. I have tested this in the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome.

Answer №1

Line height behaves differently from other inherited properties, making its inheritance process more complex.

For a detailed demonstration of how line-height functions based on specified units, check out this informative slideshow.

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You can find the explanation starting from slide 28 in the presentation.

Answer №2

Line height has no impact on the width of the boxes in this scenario. The 150px width is maintained regardless of line height settings. However, using overflow: auto triggers a vertical scroll bar to appear, reducing the available width from 300px to approximately 280px. This causes the colored boxes to no longer display side by side as expected. Removing overflow: auto will display the result correctly.

Update

Check out the revised demo here. I resolved the issue by adding 1px padding to the container to offset the vertical scrollbar problem. For larger font sizes, a 2px padding may be necessary.

Answer №3

When using Chrome, adjusting the line height to 18px causes the divs to be positioned next to each other without changing the width. This issue seems to stem from how the height of #wrap is calculated. The browser struggles to determine whether or not to display a scrollbar within #wrap. Since #wrap has a fixed width of 300, it can only accommodate two divs side by side without showing the scrollbar. To resolve this, you may need to explicitly set overflow in #wrap to hidden, or remove this property entirely.

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