Colour behind text?

Hey guys, is there anyway to make a colour behind text? Like:

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/2835/picture133md6.jpg

background-color: orange;

You'll need to wrap that piece of text in some tag, such as <span>... give that span a class, such as .orange and then it should look like this:

CSS:

.orange {
background-color: orange;
}

HTML:

<span class="orange">highlighted</span>

Hmm, i really need it in HTML though, sure there isn't a way for it in HTML?

<span style="background-color: orange">highlighted</span>

thanks!