CSS Vertical Alignment in HTML emails

As we all know, most email clients don't support all CSS attributes. If I want to vertically align images and text, what's the most compatible means of doing so?

Right now, I'm doing:

<img style="position:relative;top:3px;" src="http:/开发者_如何学C/url.com/img.jpg" /> <span>Words and stuff</span>

This works in some clients, but not all (particularly Gmail). Any better suggestions?

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I hate to say it, but <table>. CSS position is not supported well