I'm doing a basic course on html5 inc CSS and i am stuck on one simple thing i cannot seem to vertically align and center then space words in a Nav Column

so far i have this

With this code!
HTML: <nav><a href="ex4.1html"><span>Exercise4.1</span></a>
<a href="ex4.2html"><span>Exercise4.2</span></a>
<a href="ex4.3html"><span>Exercise4.3</span></a></nav>
<section><img src="../images/Basketball.jpg" alt = "Your Basketball Picture Didn't Load!"/> </section>

CSS:nav{ text-align: center;
padding: 1em 0;
width: 100%;
word-spacing: 5em;
background-color:#FFFF00;
position:absolute;top:200px;left:824px;width:200px; height:768px;}

Add this style to your css and adjust the margin-bottom value to your liking.

Didn't work but managed to solve the problem by adding this code to my html
<header>I Like Basketball!</header>
<br/><br/>
<nav><a href="ex4.1html"><span>Exercise4.1</span></a>
<br/><br/>
<a href="ex4.2html"><span>Exercise4.2</span></a>
<br/><br/>
<a href="ex4.3html"><span>Exercise4.3</span></a></nav>
the double <br/> helped make the spaces i needed.