CSS to select/style first word

I have to disagree with Dale... The strong element is actually the wrong element to use, implying something about the meaning, use, or emphasis of the content while you are simply intending to provide style to the element.

Ideally you would be able to accomplish this with a pseudo-class and your stylesheet, but as that is not possible you should make your markup semantically correct and use <span class="first-word">.

What you are looking for is a pseudo-element that doesn't exist. There is :first-letter and :first-line, but no :first-word.

You can of course do this with JavaScript. Here's some code I found that does this: http://www.dynamicsitesolutions.com/javascript/first-word-selector/