How could italics affect css side column placement?

"i "seemed to be the culprit

[annej]

I don't know if there is any answer to this but I just spent an hour on a page that worked fine in Firefox but the left column was showing below instead of too the left in IE. I looked for the usual things first like wayward divs. The page validated just fine so that didn't help. Finally I went through the whole document taking one small section off at a time to see how it affected the sinking column. Finally it came down to a quote that I'd italicized. Why would <i> and </i> in the main part of the page affect the placement of the right column.

I have the problem solved now but am curious as to why such a thing would happen.

[penders]

Did your quoted text allow for word-wrap? ie. You didn't have anything like i{white-space:nowrap} in your CSS? Italic text certainly takes up a bit more width than non-italics, but normally it should cope!?

[SuzyUK]

IE can wrongly compute widths when italic text is involved.. it never has been real good when calculations/counting is involved ;)

It's related to the many hasLayout errors (at least I think some of the suggested fixes are the same?) - Try a search for "IE and Italics" by Bruno Fassino, or on P.I.E.

[annej]

What's really strange is that there are two other places on the page where a quote is in italics and they cause no problem.

The width aspect fits my situation as what happened to the left column usually happens when I have something too wide in it.

I'm off to search "IE and Italics" by Bruno Fassino.

added - I just read Bruno and the fact that it was a loooong quote probably triggered it. Funny thing was my hubby told me it was a software glitch and I doubted him. Now I have to admit he was right and it's a famous bug at that.

Thanks so much folks. How I love this forum!

[Xapti]

Well it's not really famous, it's known. IE has so many many bugs, it's pretty hard for any one or few to get famous. This is kinda a rant, but I'm sure you know what I mean. :)