HTML Utopia: Designing Without Tables Using CSS

9.1. Using the span Element

Sometimes, you want to treat some text in a paragraph, or even a headline, differently from the rest of the text of which it is a part. For example, you might want to change the font, or some font characteristic, such as size or color, of one or two words in the midst of a paragraph. Obviously, you can't create a new paragraph within the existing paragraph without completely messing up the formatting of the page.

That's where the <span> tag comes in. A <span> tag creates an inline collection of text to which styles can be applied. A <span> tag is similar to a <div> tag, but is treated as an inline element by default instead of a block element.

As you might expect, a span element can be connected to an ID or class ...