Okay, so I recently had this issue happen to me.  Here is a snippet (from view source):

on or before <span class="someName"></span>or else

Note:
1) span is empty on purpose. It is AJAX driven.  It prints out a date (like december 10, 2008)
2) there is no space b/w the close span and "or"

You see where this is going? The date needed a white space just before the "or".  I tried everything from adding a literal white space to using "&nbsp;" but it didn't work.  I also went into the javascript code that was printing out the AJAX date and added the same 2 white spaces, to no avail.  Also, applying styling via the CSS class name didn't work. It was very weird. I guess something in the AJAX call threw something off or maybe some other code on the page was overriding something.

After like 3 hours, I finally found a solution.  Before I give it out, let's see who else is up for an early xmas gift 

As always, I will let a few posts go by before i respond.  Good luck!

A full code would ave help but here goes,

"class" attribute must be the first (or only) attribute of the "span" element.
"span" tag and "class" attribute must be separated by a single space.
"class" must be enclosed within double quotes.
"span" tag and "class" attribute must be in lower case.

1) not necessarily
2) Already in place
3) Already in place
4) Not necessarily: You could have somename (not as readable), someName, some-name, or even some_name

nice try though. I give you "A" for attempt. Any other takers?