There really aren't any scenarios I can think of that an element would need to have `grid-column` set without being wrapped in another grid, so for that reason

There really aren't any scenarios I can think of that an element would need to have `grid-column` set without being wrapped in another grid, so for that reason it is generally safer to set `grid-column` on all children than it is to set `max-width`. I would be surprised if I added an element only to discover that its width was being modified by a wildcard rule, less so with `grid-column` because grid placement is arguably the concern of the grid. As a side note, I like this technique and have already had a good opportunity to apply it instead of the old padding & negative margins method or even flexbox + stretch (and I like flexbox), neither of which actually worked for this very specific case.