CSS - width not honored on span tag

Question

I have a issue with one of my spans. Please consider the following styles:

.form_container .col1che
{
float: left; 
width: 4%; 
text-align: left;    
}

.form_c         


        

Answer 1

Span is an inline element and you can therefore not set a width. To set a width you must first set it to a block element with

display:block;

After that you can set a width. Since span is a native inline element, you can use inline-block too and it will even work in IE:

display:inline-block;