column-span

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2020.

The column-span CSS property makes it possible for an element to span across all columns when its value is set to all.

Try it

column-span: none;

column-span: all;


  
    
      London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in
      Lincoln's Inn Hall.
    
    Spanner?
    
      Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters
      had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be
      wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an
      elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.

.multicol-element {
  width: 100%;
  text-align: left;
  column-count: 3;
}

.multicol-element p {
  margin: 0;
}

#example-element {
  background-color: rebeccapurple;
  padding: 10px;
  color: #fff;
}

An element that spans more than one column is called a spanning element.

Syntax

css

/* Keyword values */
column-span: none;
column-span: all;

/* Global values */
column-span: inherit;
column-span: initial;
column-span: revert;
column-span: revert-layer;
column-span: unset;

The column-span property is specified as one of the keyword values listed below.

Values

none: The element does not span multiple columns.
all: The element spans across all columns. Content in the normal flow that appears before the element is automatically balanced across all columns before the element appears. The element establishes a new block formatting context.

Formal definition

Initial value	`none`
Applies to	in-flow block-level elements
Inherited	no
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete

Formal syntax

column-span = 
  none             |
    |
  all              |
  auto

Examples

Making a heading span columns

In this example, the heading is made to span across all the columns of the article.

HTML

html


  Header spanning all of the columns
  
    The h2 should span all the columns. The rest of the text should be
    distributed among the columns.
  
  
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  
  
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  
  
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.
  
  
    This is a bunch of text split into three columns using the CSS `columns`
    property. The text is equally distributed over the columns.

CSS

css

article {
  columns: 3;
}

h2 {
  column-span: all;
}

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Multi-column Layout Module Level 1 # column-span