Can anybody give me some advice on why this isn't working? I'm trying to make the first letter of an article stand out; ideally I'd like to figure out how to make it drop and push the rest of the paragraph in a little bit, like in an old book. I've been able to change the basics, but I'm trying to get a single-pixel border around the letter, which just won't work. And this style isn't IE friendly at all; the letter just disappears behind the rest of the paragraph.

Any thoughts on how to fix this? An example in action is my digital soft focus article, with the relevant code below:

<span class="firstLetter">M</span>ost lens-makers ...

.firstLetter {
    font-size:2.5em;
    color:#AA7766;
    display:block;
    vertical-align:bottom;
    float:left;
    border:1px black;
}

I've tried with a span and a div, and get the same results.

Maybe something like that will help you:

<style>
.firstLetter {

    float:left;
    font-size: 2.5em;
    color:#AA7766;	 
    border: 1px solid black;
}
</style>
<p>
<span class="firstLetter">M</span>
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</p>

Yes.
When specifying the border like you're trying, you'll need he following format.

border: width type color

Yep, it should be: border 1px SOLID black.

Here's an excellent article on Dropcaps - which you can modify to suit your needs:
http://www.mandarindesign.com/dropcaps.html