Let\'s say I have this HTML:
Features
Smells Good
- <
I know you didn't want to use floats and the question was just theory but in case anyone finds this useful, here's a solution using floats.
Add a class of left to your li elements that you want to float:
Smells Good
and amend your CSS as follows:
li { text-align:center; float: left; clear: left; padding:0.1em 1em }
.left {float: left; clear: none;}
http://jsfiddle.net/chut319/xJ3pe/
You don't need to specify widths or inline-blocks and works as far back as IE6.