Problem with Select tag in iPad Safari

Question

The <select> tag which provides a drop-down list is giving me problems.
I when I change the value, sometimes I get all sorts of spurious characters after the field and sometimes I get a truncated value.
I need to put a span tag in front of it to get a marker for a required field as shown below. When that tag is not there, the problem does not occur. But I can't take it out as I this is a multiple platform app I have to get rendering properly on several platforms.
Any ideas?
<style type="text/css">
.requiredBlock
background-color:#CCCC00;
bottom:1px;
left:-4px;
position:absolute;
top:1px;
width:3px;
</style>
<select id="myList" name="My List" size="1"
...

Answer 1

I think this forum software is editing out some of the code I entered.
There is supposed to be a span tag before the select list. Pretend that "spam" below is really "span".
<style type="text/css">
.requiredBlock
background-color:#CCCC00;
bottom:1px;
left:-4px;
position:absolute;
top:1px;
width:3px;
</style>
<spam class="requiredBlock" ></spam >
<select id="myList" name="My List" size="1"
...