The background style is great for setting off entire sections of text using a different color. For example, this section uses a black background with white text.
On the other hand, this section achieves a slightly different effect by using a pleasant Sky Blue background with Navy text.

You can also use the background style to highlight individual words.

One of the most interesting ways to use the background style is to specify a background image. The browser will tile the image so that it fills the entire section, like this.