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I have been using a reset CSS set of styles for quite some time now and each time I got to create a new website, the reset the annoys me the most is the reseting of a p tag margin and padding. I understand why, but I'm wondering what the "default" padding and/or margin should be on a p element?

I'm guessing this isn't consistent across browsers and often needs to be tweaked for each site, but is there a set of most common margin and/or padding values?

Short version: Is it (for example) 5px margin and padding on top and bottom...or something else?

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I know what you mean; it is surprisingly difficult to figure out how to “unset” a CSS value. For example a Wordpress theme I use sets blockquotes to have 0 margins which I do not like (it makes them indistinguishable from regular paragraphs). Of course I can edit its style.css, but that’s not ideal, and I am instead trying to create a child-theme. Unfortunately, I cannot figure out how to set the blockquote to use its regular, default, unmodified margins. ఠ_ఠ –  Synetech Feb 12 '13 at 1:32

4 Answers 4

up vote 21 down vote accepted

The CSS 2.1 specification has an default style sheet for HTML 4. It’s just informative and not normative so browsers may use it but do not have to.

Another resource could be the webdeveloper tools of the browsers. Most can show you the cascade of rules that were applied to a particular element. An example: Firefox and Safari (WebKit) seem to use margin: 1em 0px for p elements.

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At the risk of sounding anally retentive, the "px" after zero is superfluous. –  autonomatt Apr 10 '12 at 15:10

P tag margin top and bottom is 16px.

That is similar to giving style margin: 16px 0px; to a paragraph.

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CSS RESET Will reset p tags margin and padding to 0px, common margin and padding depends on your Layout and type of Content.

still you can use 5px , as your own default margin and padding

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Is it 5px margin and 5px padding on top and bottom? –  Darryl Hein May 4 '09 at 8:00
yes.padding on top and bottom –  Wasim Shaikh May 4 '09 at 10:00

I always use firefox.

By the firebug addon I found that the default margin-top/bottom of the

tag is set to 16px and the padding is set to 0, while for the body element the margin-top/bottom/right/left is set to 8px.

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