id="telephone" is not a class name. It is a selector name (id) for whatever tag you use it on. An id="" with the SAME NAME can only be used once per page. The ".telephone" is a class name and can be used as many times on a page as needed.
Classes, ids can be used with the span tag, but what you show is called inline CSS which is normally not used by people who know how to code with CSS. In order of precedence:
1) Excternal CSS file linked to by the link tag placed between each page's head tags.
2) Embedded CSS which is using the style tags which are placed between the head tags. Example:
3) Inline CSS styling which uses the style="" attribute to style the tags individually.
DO NOT use keywords in your CSS as selector names, classes or ids. Example:
.body { ... blah ... }
is not allowed.
CSS Tutorials:
http://www.w3schools.com/Css/default.asp
http://www.csstutorial.net/
http://www.echoecho.com/css.htm
http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/
http://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/011/firstcss
http://htmldog.com/guides/cssbeginner/
http://www.davesite.com/webstation/css/
http://www.htmlcodetutorial.com/character_famsupp_193.html
Tableless Web Design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tableless_web_design
Images, Tables, and Mysterious Gaps: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Images,_Tables,_and_Mysterious_Gaps
Ron