CSS Grid Layout: The Span Keyword

If you’re placing items onto their parent grid with grid-column or grid-row, you can use the span keyword to avoid specifying end lines when items should span more than one column or row.

Given the following CSS rule for a grid item, which spans 3 columns and 2 rows:

.item {
  grid-column: 2 / 5;
  grid-row: 1 / 3;
}

We can use the span keyword like this instead:

.item {
  grid-column: 2 / span 3;
  grid-row: 1 / span 2;
}

The end line can be provided and span used as the start line instead, in which case the span acts in reverse, so the following is also equivalent:

.item {
  grid-column: span 3 / 5;
  grid-row: span 2 / 3;
}

If multiple lines have the same name, you can define the start and end lines like in the following example:

.item {
  grid-column: col 2 / col 7;
  grid-row: content 6 / content 10;
}

The item starts on the column with the 2nd line named col and ends on the 7th line also named col. Similarly, it starts on the 6th line named row and ends on the 10th line named row.

And here the span keyword can help also, and the following is equivalent:

.item {
  grid-column: col 2 / span col 5;
  grid-row: content 6 / span content 4;
}

Span can also be used with the grid-area property. For example, if we want an item to be placed automatically, but to span across a provided number of rows and columns:

.item {
  grid-area: span 6 / span 4;
}