Form input size weirdness

I’m trying to put a form in a static page.
<input type=”text” name=”srt” value=”12″ size=”1″ />
But the size is like 50!!! Why doesn’t this work?
Or to ask it a different way… how “should” it be done?
The form codex about search and comment was nice but didn’t really seem relevant to my “donate” form.

I was able to constrain it by setting the width of the class to 20px but that ain’t right.