 <p>The <code>&lt;span&gt;&lt;/span&gt;</code> tags still inherit the attributes of the <em>line</em> they are a part of. In other words they are horizontally centered in the same way as the rest of the line. In order to achieve what you want you will have to change the <em>line-height</em> in your DIV to represent the size of the enlarged SPAN text.</p>