The content of this style manual is all contained in invisible tables to allow us control over the layout of the pages. Without tables, text and graphics are essentially poured onto the user's screen, with the actual layout of pages depending entirely on the width and height of the browser window. Because of the limitations of HTML, the only layout tool for site designers at this time is tables.
Tables are currently the only HTML option for page layout.
If you simply place a chunk of text on a page, the length of the lines is determined by the dimensions of the viewer's browser window. When the user resizes their window, the text reflows to fill the new space. The conventions of print give us a comfortable place to access content. Without some adherence to these standards you may discomfit and ultimately lose your readers. To avoid this use tables to define the areas of your pages.