Question

I am having difficulty trying to horizontally center an (inline?) element within my containing div. I want “some text” to have a background which collapses to it, and for that all to be centered within the containing element. I know I can do this if i specify a width, but I am trying to avoid that

Check out a simple example I put together with some nonworking css…
JSfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Mqw5R/ (works great even without js!)

<div>
<p>Some text</p>
</div>

=========================
=                       =
=      |some text|      =
=                       =
=========================

Answer 1

Add text-align:center to the containing element, not the child, like so:
http://jsfiddle.net/thomas4g/Mqw5R/1/