div标记不在显示的页面上

In the php file I have the following code

<div class="entry-meta">
    <?php echo theme_post_meta(); ?>
</div>

The function theme_post_meta calculates and returns html that has two spans.

<span class="posted-on">Posted 22 hours ago</span> / 
<span class="posted-in">News, Important</span>

However when the page is loaded in the browser the outer div is no longer there.

Try to do php cancatenation as:

<?php echo '<div class="entry-meta">'.theme_post_meta().'</div>'; ?>