CSS vertical alignment text inside li

Solution 1:

Define the parent with display: table and the element itself with vertical-align: middle and display: table-cell.

Solution 2:

However many years late this response may be, anyone coming across this might just want to try

li {
    display: flex;
    flex-direction: row;
    align-items: center;
}

Browser support for flexbox is far better than it was when @scottjoudry posted his response above, but you may still want to consider prefixing or other options if you're trying to support much older browsers. caniuse: flex

Solution 3:

line-height is how you vertically align text. It is pretty standard and I don't consider it a "hack". Just add line-height: 100px to your ul.catBlock li and it will be fine.

In this case you may have to add it to ul.catBlock li a instead since all of the text inside the li is also inside of an a. I have seen some weird things happen when you do this, so try both and see which one works.