---
title: "CSS Grid's Best Friend"
url: "https://www.bekk.christmas/post/2019/11/css-grid's-best-friend"
authors: ["Sondre Kongsgård"]
published: "2019-12-11"
updated: "2024-11-07T13:05:28Z"
language: "en-US"
type: "article"
tags: ["CSS"]
---

# CSS Grid's Best Friend

There is a display property that goes hand-in-hand with CSS grid: `display: contents`. With this property you can keep good HTML semantics when using CSS grid. Let's see how.

Let's say you're writing a blog, and want an overview page of all the posts you've written. You might choose the following markup:

```html
<section>
  <h1>My Awesome Blog</h1>
  <article>
    <h2>Title #1</h2>
    <p>Ingress #1</p>
  </article>
  <article>
    <h2>A title that spans multiple lines</h2>
    <p>Ingress #2</p>
  </article>
  <article>
    <h2>Title #3</h2>
    <p>Ingress #4</p>
  </article>
  <article>
    <h2>Title #4</h2>
    <p>Ingress #4</p>
  </article>
</section>
```

If you want to present this in e.g. a two-column layout, a good choice would be to set `display: grid` on the section tag:

<https://codepen.io/kongsgaard/embed/bGNVMOV?height=265&theme-id=dark&default-tab=css,result>

However, you might stumble into a challenge if you also want both the title and the ingress of each article to align nicely with each other. In that case it might be tempting to remove the `<article>` tag from the markup, but instead you may simply add `display: contents` on this tag, along with some extra CSS to specify the flow of the elements in the grid:

<https://codepen.io/kongsgaard/embed/ExaVLym?height=265&theme-id=dark&default-tab=css,result>

See how Ingress #1 is now vertically aligned with Ingress #2? 🤩

When the display property `display: contents` is added to the `<article>` tag, the `h2` and `p` elements act as if they were direct children of the grid.

So next time you're working with CSS grid, see if you can utilize its companion `display: contents` to get the grid just the way you want it - while keeping the HTML semantics in tip-top shape.

PS: `display: contents` also enables you to use CSS grid with tables, which potentially gives you superpowers over the common `table-layout: fixed` approach (see the link "Flexible data tables" for an in-depth blog post). Here is a simple example:

<https://codepen.io/kongsgaard/embed/RwNWJbz?height=265&theme-id=dark&default-tab=css,result>

## Relevant resources recommended by the author

- [Display, MDN web docs](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/display)
- [Flexible data tables](https://adamlynch.com/flexible-data-tables-with-css-grid/)

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