Ok, ozzy47 was kind enough to check this out and found a different solution. He added a manual left-padding value which seems to work ok. I'll be looking into how this appears on different screens but it seems good right now!
Code:
<vb:if condition="$thread['postuserid'] == $post['userid']" >
<span style="color: #a22547; text-transform: uppercase; font-weight:
bold; padding-left:170px;">Thread Author
</span>