ie and ff display text with different vertical alignment within <div>s

Looking for a way to position the same for ff and ie

[Voltron]

In a simple div with absolute positioning (and border "on" so I can see what's happening) ie displays my text near the top of the box, ff displays text at the bottom. I tried to adjust using line-height and padding attributes, but can't seem to balance the way these two browsers display text. Novice here. Suggestions?

[collymellon]

Have you tried:

margin: 0 auto;
padding: 0 auto;
vertical-align: top;

[createErrorMsg]

voltron, welcome to WebmasterWorld!

If collymellon's suggestion doesn't help, please post the code you are using for this div (html and css).

cEM

[Voltron]

Thanks for your replies - and, so I go to copy the markup to post here, because margin:0 auto; etc wasn't working, and I see the <p> tag inside the <div> tag and decided to delete it to see if it mattered. It did. When I took the <p> tags out, ff drew the text at the top of the box where ie was already drawing it.
What's a good source for info on proper syntax?