Display post tags.

hi, i’m currently trying to have my post tags under the post.
but when there are no tags for a certain post it doesn’t show anything.
but the background still shows.

i was wondering if i could use an if statement.
so that when a tag is available it will echo the span.

this page shows this example:

(this is only part of the example)
<?php if (get_the_tags()) the_tags(); ?>

but like i was saying how would i go about doing this?

what i was thinking was something like this:
IF TAGS ARE SET {<span class="tags"><?php the_tags(); ?></span><br />} END IF TAGS ARE SET

Any and All help is appreciated. :]