vertical-align: middle
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html> <head> <title></title> <style type='text/css'> p { margin: 10px; font-size: 40px; } span { background: lightblue; } span.valign { font-size: 16px; color: white; background: steelblue; font-weight: bold; } span#middle { vertical-align: middle; } span#text-bottom { vertical-align: text-bottom; } </style> </head> <body> <p> <span> where's the peck of <span class='valign' id='text-bottom'>pickled</span> peppers Peter Piper picked? </span> </p> </body> </html>