span with vertical align
<!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 { background: #ccc; margin: 10px; font-size: 16px; } span { font-weight: bold; background: lightblue; } span > span { font-size: 40px; color: white; background: steelblue; } span + span { font-size: 20px; } span#text-top { vertical-align: text-top; } span#top { vertical-align: top; } span#text-bottom { vertical-align: text-bottom; } span#bottom { vertical-align: bottom; } </style> </head> <body> <p> <span> This is a test. <span id='text-top'>top</span> <span id='top'>top</span> </span> </p> <p> <span> This is a test. <span id='text-bottom'>bottom</span> <span id='bottom'>bottom</span> </span> </p> </body> </html>