It invloves IE being in quirks mode (like dmitry said) and the box model So it should actually be: TD#content { padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 5px; padding-top: 15px; vertical-align: top; width: 300px; word-wrap: break-word; overflow: hidden; } * html TD#content { width: 305px; /* IE 5 */ w\idth: 300px; /* IE 6 */ }