Cannot apply class to category_description() after upgrade

Today I finally upgraded to 2.3.2 from 2.2 and after doing so the formatting of my text has been affected. My main example is this line here:

<span class=”describe”><?php echo category_description(); ?></span>

Will no longer accept the style applied in the style.css that I wrote:

.describe { font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Sans-serif; color: #FFFFCC; font-size:10px; }

No matter what I do, I cannot get it to apply that style to the category description text. Most of my other styles and classes work fine. If I place a “test” in between the <span> tags, it correctly applies the style, but still not the category_description echo. Very strange?

Any assistance or knowledge of 2.3.2 specific issues around this would be greatly appreciated.