I'm trying to get a specific style on the summary of the store front module. It generates HTML something like this

Which item are you trying to style?

The product summary. If you look at the very first one it's the text that says
Use our day care center for everyone.
I can get it fine in FF/Chrome/Safari, but IE won't pick up any styles because no matter what I put in the template file, the code always generates a span tag in front of the summary. The html output it creates is attached

Create a style for .NewProduct-Summary span:

     .NewProduct-Summary span{color:red}

You can do this using the Developer Tools in IE and, when you've got what you like, add it to the appropriate css file.

Hmm, I had tried that in the css sheets to no avail. However, if I put that style in the actual template file i.e.

Possibly your style was overridden in another stylesheet.