Question

Example: jsfiddle.net/h5sE6/

css:

ul {
    float: left;
    margin-right:20px;
}
ul li {
    height: 3em;
    border: 1px solid #ff0000;
    width:200px;
}

html:

<ul>
    <li> Some text</li>
    <li>Some text<br />some more text</li>
    <li>some test text3</li>
    <li>even more text<br />and more</li>
</ul>
<ul>
    <li> Some text</li>
    <li>Some text<br />some more text</li>
    <li>some test text</li>
    <li>even more text<br />and more</li>
</ul>

This is trivial with vertically aligning text and making the height equal to the line-height if you have one line only but any more than that, things look really screwy.

Answer 1

You can do it with a helper :before element and by adding a nested <span>:

ul li span {
    display: inline-block;  
    vertical-align: middle;     
}

ul li:before{
    content: '';
    display: inline-block;
    vertical-align: middle;
    height: 100%;       
}

Here’s a demo of it in action.

This works because two inline-block elements will vertically align with each other. The :before rule creates an inline-block element that is the same height as its parent, which the variable height <span> can vertically align with.

For a complete explanation of how it works, see this answer about vertically aligning images.