Conditional CSS for individual posts

I don’t know if I can do this, but I want to be able to show different css styling for select posts on a category or archive page.

On my category pages, as can be seen here, I want to be able to add a category to a specific post and have it show “recommended” on the category page.

I thought I could do a conditional is_category statement like this but wasn’t sure

<?php /* If this is a category archive */ if (is_category('recommended')) {

<div class="special"><?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

<?php echo wptexturize(the_excerpt_reloaded()); ?>
<code><?php endwhile; ?></code>
</div>

<code>} else {</code>
<code><div class=&quot;regular&quot;><?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?></code>

<?php echo wptexturize(the_excerpt_reloaded()); ?>
<?php endwhile; ?>
</div>
}
?>

Is this possible or should I use the in_category v. the is_category?

Is there a limit to how many conditional if statements I can have in one php file? I know my questions sound very rudimentary.