ok, I'll bite. What is wrong with the following. I'm having a bit of trouble figuring it out.
<span style="color:tan;"><ul><li>decrease pain
<li>decrease disability
<li>improve strength of contractions
<li>increase the size and symmetry of the muscles
<li>return to a tonic type contraction
<li>facilitate the anticipatory function
<li>decrease the rate of LBP recurrence</ul></span>
I guess that does help out a little, but if that is so why does the following not work?
<ul><span style="color:tan;"><li>decrease pain
<li>decrease disability
<li>improve strength of contractions
<li>increase the size and symmetry of the muscles
<li>return to a tonic type contraction
<li>facilitate the anticipatory function
<li>decrease the rate of LBP recurrence</span></ul> Here is the link to the validator page (http://www.animeviews.com/article.php?ID=2&table=homework_biomechanics) where it shows the errors I am talking about.
both of those are incorrect... this second one is a little better but still not correct. if all you want to accomplish is to make the color of the li text tan... then you cause just use a css style sheet.. if you have an external style shee that you link to you can just add the properties to it, however I am going to assume that you do not have that, and as such we will use an embedded style sheet that you put at the top of the page. like so
<DOCTYPE....>
<html>
<head>
<title>TITLE OF PAGE</title>
<style type="text/css">
<!--
ul li {
color: #d2b48c;
}
-->
</style>
</head>
Its always better to use the hexidecimal equivalent on your colors. for other colors see http://halflife.ukrpack.net/csfiles/help/colors.shtml
then you also need to modify the content of the list itself, and close the ending list items.
<ul>
<li>decrease pain</li>
<li>decrease disability </li>
<li>improve strength of contractions</li>
<li>increase the size and symmetry of the muscles </li>
<li>return to a tonic type contraction</li>
<li>facilitate the anticipatory function </li>
<li>decrease the rate of LBP recurrence</li>
</ul>
also note that i took out the <span> tags. now your list is valid markup