[css] Why is vertical-align:text-top; not working in CSS

I want to align some text to the top of a div. It seems that vertical-align: text-top; should do the trick, but it doesn't work. The other things that I have done, such as putting the divs into columns and displaying a dashed border (so I can see where the top of the div is) all work fine.

#header_p { 
    font-family: Arial;
    font-size: 32px;
    font-weight: bold;
}
#header_selecttxt {
    font-family: Arial;
    font-size: 12px;
    font-weight: bold;
    vertical-align: text-top;
}
#header_div_left { 
    float: left; 
    width: 50%;
    border: dashed;
    vertical-align: top;
}
#header_div_right { 
    margin-left: 50%;
    width: 50%;
    border: dashed;
}

The all above not work for me, I have just checked this and its work :

vertical-align: super;

 <div id="lbk_mng_rdooption" style="float: left;">
     <span class="bold" style="vertical-align: super;">View:</span>
 </div>

I know by padding or margin will work, but that is last choise I prefer.

vertical-align is only supposed to work on elements that are rendered as inline. <span> is rendered as inline by default, but not all elements are. The paragraph block element, <p>, is rendered as a block by default. Table render types (e.g. table-cell) will allow you to use vertical-align as well.

Some browsers may allow you to use the vertical-align CSS property on items such as the paragraph block, but they are not supposed to. Text denoted as a paragraph should be filled with written-language content or the mark-up is incorrect and should be using one of a number of other options instead.

I hope this helps!

The problem I had can't be made out from the info I have provided:

• I had the text enclosed in old school <p> tags.

I changed the <p> to <span> and it works fine.

something like

  position:relative;
  top:-5px;

just on the inline element itself works for me. Have to play with the top to get it centered vertically...

You can use margin-top: -50% to move the text all the way to the top of the div.

margin-top: -50%;

You can use contextual selectors and move the vertical-align there. This would work with the p tag, then. Take this snippet below as an example. Any p tags within your class will respect the vertical-align control:

#header_selecttxt {
    font-family: Arial;
    font-size: 12px;
    font-weight: bold;
}

#header_selecttxt p {
    vertical-align: text-top;
}

You could also keep the vertical-align in both sections so that other, inline elements would use this.

You could apply position: relative; to the div and then position: absolute; top: 0; to a paragraph or span inside of it containing the text.

position:absolute;
top:0px; 
margin:5px;

Solved my problem.