When font-size and font size collide

Hi,

I've been constructing this new site which is generated by php scripts,
and since pages are done on-the-fly from a database, CSS is being used to
keep all styles consistent.

On the front page I'm using a normal p tag which is defined as arial size
10pt. This works great, but when I do:

<p><font size="+2">This should be bigger</font

the text stays at 10pt. Now, my interpretation of inheritance (which I've
not read up on to any large extent) is that the closest-instruction to the
object is obeyed, i.e. the P tag's 10pt, which gets overridden by the font
tag.

The problem occurs in Netscape Communicator 4.6. Since I use Linux, I
can't test in IE, but bearing in mind that no browser is yet fully
CSS-functional, I thought it best to ask you guys what the proper system
is and implement it ready for Mozilla 5. If I can be backward compatible I
will be, but not if I have to generate a lot of CSS and font tags
everywhere.

I can use <p style="font-size: 14pt">This is bigger</p> but this seems
like an uneccessary waste of bytes...

Any thoughts?

James Green
Site Manager,
LinuxNewbie.com (LNC)