correct use of <div>?

[macdan]

Hi

I have a client who is questioning my use of the div tag to apply classes to small areas of text such as : <div class="mystyle">text</div>

It works fine but they are implying that it's a bit of a hack - what is the correct usage of this tag? - can anyone tell me what the the div tag stands for and is it compliant/good practice to use it to apply text formatting to a single line of text?

Thanks for any comments.

[sowen]

<div> is a block level attribute like <p> for small inline class changes you should use <span>.

[macdan]

cheers sowen that would explain why you get an automatic line break after using div. I'll use span from now on which presumably doesn't give the line break.

[Sarah]

you can also use class which becomes part of <P> also i.e. <P class=style>

[creole]

You can apply a class to ANY HTML tag. As mentioned earlier, DIV is a block level element and as such implies a carriage return after the closing tag.

SPAN is the best tag to use to apply formatting to a single word or sentence.