CSS set li indent

Googling and searching stack overflow did not return any results that I could recognize, so forgive me if this has been asked before...

I have drop down main menu which uses lists as its basis. The problem is, the lists are very wide, and they do not indent far enough when expanded. So, this is my problem! How do I make the indent amount on lists larger via CSS?

padding-left is what controls the indentation of ul not margin-left.

Compare: Here's setting padding-left to 0, notice all the indentation disappears.

ul {
  padding-left: 0;
}

<ul>
  <li>section a
    <ul>
      <li>one</li>
      <li>two</li>
      <li>three</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>
<ul>
  <li>section b
    <ul>
      <li>one</li>
      <li>two</li>
      <li>three</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

and here's setting margin-left to 0px. Notice the indentation does NOT change.

ul {
  margin-left: 0;
}

<ul>
  <li>section a
    <ul>
      <li>one</li>
      <li>two</li>
      <li>three</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>
<ul>
  <li>section b
    <ul>
      <li>one</li>
      <li>two</li>
      <li>three</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

to indent a ul dropdown menu, use

/* Main Level */
ul{
  margin-left:10px;
}

/* Second Level */
ul ul{
  margin-left:15px;
}

/* Third Level */
ul ul ul{
  margin-left:20px;
}

/* and so on... */

You can indent the lis and (if applicable) the as (or whatever content elements you have) as well , each with differing effects. You could also use padding-left instead of margin-left, again depending on the effect you want.

Update

By default, many browsers use padding-left to set the initial indentation. If you want to get rid of that, set padding-left: 0px;

Still, both margin-left and padding-left settings impact the indentation of lists in different ways. Specifically: margin-left impacts the indentation on the outside of the element's border, whereas padding-left affects the spacing on the inside of the element's border. (Learn more about the CSS box model here)

Setting padding-left: 0; leaves the li's bullet icons hanging over the edge of the element's border (at least in Chrome), which may or may not be what you want.

Examples of padding-left vs margin-left and how they can work together on ul: https://jsfiddle.net/daCrosby/bb7kj8cr/1/

Also try:

ul {
  list-style-position: inside;
}

li{
    margin-left:50px;
}

or replace 50px with whatever you want.

I found that doing it in two relatively simple steps seemed to work quite well. The first css definition for ul sets the base indent that you want for the list as a whole. The second definition sets the indent value for each nested list item within it. In my case they are the same, but you can obviously pick whatever you want.

ul {
    margin-left: 1.5em;
}

ul > ul {
    margin-left: 1.5em;
}

Using the chrome dev tools and looking at the styles applied to a ul element by the user agent stylesheet (at the time of writing), the default styles in Chrome are:

ul {
    display: block;
    list-style-type: disc;
    margin-block-start: 1em;
    margin-block-end: 1em;
    margin-inline-start: 0px;
    margin-inline-end: 0px;
    padding-inline-start: 40px;
}

The padding-inline-start property is used to set the indentation of the bullets (and the bullets of child lists).

> The padding-inline-start CSS property defines the logical inline start padding of an element, which maps to a physical padding depending on the element's writing mode, directionality, and text orientation.

(The other default properties may also help people get the look that they're after)

Note that this was mentioned earlier in a comment by @preferred_anon on another answer, but I missed that when I was first looking, so I've added this answer.