# Spacing

USWDS-Vue includes a wide range of shorthand responsive margin and padding utility classes to modify an element’s appearance.

# How it works

Assign responsive-friendly margin or padding values to an element or a subset of its sides with shorthand classes. Includes support for individual properties, all properties, and vertical and horizontal properties. Classes are built using the default USWDS spacing token, of 8px.

# Notation

Spacing utilities that apply to all breakpoints, from xs to xl, have no breakpoint abbreviation in them. This is because those classes are applied from min-width: 0 and up, and thus are not bound by a media query. The remaining breakpoints, however, do include a breakpoint abbreviation.

The classes are named using the format {property}{sides}-{size} for xs and {property}{sides}-{breakpoint}-{size} for sm, md, lg, and xl.

Where property is one of:

m - for classes that set margin p - for classes that set padding

Where sides is one of:

t - for classes that set margin-top or padding-top b - for classes that set margin-bottom or padding-bottom l - for classes that set margin-left or padding-left r - for classes that set margin-right or padding-right x - for classes that set both *-left and *-right y - for classes that set both *-top and *-bottom blank - for classes that set a margin or padding on all 4 sides of the element

Where size is one of:

0 - for classes that eliminate the margin or padding by setting it to 0 05 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 0.5 1 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 1 105 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 1.5 2 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 2 3 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step 4 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 1.5 5 - for classes that set the margin or padding to $step * 3 auto - for classes that set the margin to auto

(You can add more sizes by adding entries to the $steps Sass map variable.)

# Examples

Here are some representative examples of these classes:


.mt-0 {
  margin-top: 0 !important;
}

.ml-1 {
  margin-left: ($step * .1) !important;
}

.px-2 {
  padding-left: ($step * 2) !important;
  padding-right: ($step * 2) !important;
}

.p-3 {
  padding: ($step * 3) !important;
}

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# Horizontal centering

Additionally, uswds-vue also includes an .mx-auto class for horizontally centering fixed-width block level content—that is, content that has display: block and a width set—by setting the horizontal margins to auto.

Centered element

<div class="mx-auto" style="width: 200px;">
  Centered element
</div>

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# Negative margin

In CSS, margin properties can utilize negative values (padding cannot). The syntax is nearly the same as the default, positive margin utilities, but with the addition of n before the requested size. Here’s an example class that’s the opposite of .mt-1:

.mt-n1 {
  margin-top: -$step !important;
}

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