Best way to fill the foreground of an area?

[planb]

Hello,

I working on a form with a table with altenating background colors.
I want the colors to print when the page is printed, and despite the
fact that this form is going to be for my own personal use, I don't
want to tell the browser to print background colors when printing.

It's currently working using borders and relative positioning, but is
there a better way?

Using inline CSS, my current code is:
<div style= "width:400px; height: 2.5em;">
<div style="border-bottom: 2.5em solid E9E9E8;
float:left; width:400px;height:0px;line-height:0px;">
</div>

<div style="position: relative; top: -2.5em; left: .25em;">
<span style = "font: italic small-caps 900 12px times;">
some words go here <br />
and then some more.<br />
and yet more.
</span>
</div>
</div>

--
JBM