How do you code the following to an external style sheet?

Question

with float elements belong the comments class on the page's left margin, width of element 180px, padding 5 px, text color white, font size 8pt.
I have...class.comments {font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-color: white; font-size: 8pt; margin-left: 180px; padding: 5px}....the boder that I defined in the htm document as .comments {backgound-color: brown} the background color and the text all all the way across the page and not confined to the 180 px. What am I doing wrong????

2 answers

(1) If you're overflowing, try enclosing your comments div inside a wrapper div, defined as the width of the screen, then floating the comments div left within the wrapper div.
(2) If you get desperate after (1), you could add to it, "overflow: hidden;" or "overflow: scroll;" The first would chop off the overflowing text, and the second would place a scrollbar...either way, you're DEALING WITH the text inside the "comments" div. (Don't forget to place a "width: 180px...I didn't see that, in your comments definition...You need to CONSTRAIN the text by a means OTHER than defining a margin to OFFSET it from the other side of the screen!)

In your CSS external style sheet, put in:
.comments {
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-color: white;
font-size: 8pt;
margin-left: 180px;
padding: 5px;
backgound-color: brown;
}


Then, for your html, you put

Text here

Answer 1

(1) If you're overflowing, try enclosing your comments div inside a wrapper div, defined as the width of the screen, then floating the comments div left within the wrapper div.
(2) If you get desperate after (1), you could add to it, "overflow: hidden;" or "overflow: scroll;" The first would chop off the overflowing text, and the second would place a scrollbar...either way, you're DEALING WITH the text inside the "comments" div. (Don't forget to place a "width: 180px...I didn't see that, in your comments definition...You need to CONSTRAIN the text by a means OTHER than defining a margin to OFFSET it from the other side of the screen!)

Answer 2

In your CSS external style sheet, put in:
.comments {
font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;
font-color: white;
font-size: 8pt;
margin-left: 180px;
padding: 5px;
backgound-color: brown;
}


Then, for your html, you put