Question: It is weird. Here is the problem: I have some text within 'span' tag, whenever I put some special characters in the text, these characters will be shown in weird places!
suppose I have this:

```
<span>Your birthday</span> 
<span>(must be in the format of MM/DD/YYYY)</span>

```

it will be rendered like this:

```
(Your birthday (must be in the format of MM/DD/YYYY

```

any idea of what's happening?

**Updates:**

The problem is not related to browser, and I can not reproduce this on JSFiddle. If I change the span to be inline-block, then the bracket can be displayed correctly. 
However, there is another problem: if the first word in span is a number it will be put at the end, e.g.

```
<span>123 555 444 666</span>
<span>123 main street</span>

```

will be rendered as:

```
666 444 555 123 <- gets reverted! 
main street 123

```

Answer: 
Use `<div>`, or add `display:block` to your span.

"It" is happening, because `<span>` elements are inline elements. Inline elements allow other inline elements at the same line.

All of the following lines will produce:

```
Foo
Bar

<div>Foo</div> <div>Bar</div>

<span style="display:block;">Foo</span> <span style="display:block;">Bar</span>

<style>span {display:block}</style>
<span>Foo</span><span>Bar</span>

```
Works OK in JSFiddle: <http://jsfiddle.net/simply_simpy/fmE5j/>

Can you replicate?