As stated in section 8.3.1, the margins of floating boxes never collapse with margins of adjacent boxes. Thus, in the previous example, vertical margins do not collapse between the P box and the floated IMG box. The contents of floats are stacked as if floats generated new stacking contexts, except that any positioned elements and elements that actually create new stacking contexts take part in the float's parent stacking context. A float can overlap other boxes in the normal flow (e.g., when a normal flow box next to a float has negative margins). When this happens, floats are rendered in front of non-positioned in-flow blocks, but behind in-flow inlines. Here is another illustration, showing what happens when a float overlaps borders of elements in the normal flow. This is a inline box.

Example 1. Assume (for the sake of simplicity), that we have just three boxes, in this order: block B1 with a bottom margin of M1 (B1 has no children and no padding or border), floating block F with a height H, and block B2 with a top margin of M2 (no padding or border, no children). B2 has 'clear' set to 'both'. We also assume B2 is not empty. Without considering the 'clear' property on B2, we have the situation in the diagram below. The margins of B1 and B2 collapse. Let's say the bottom border edge of B1 is at y = 0, then the top of F is at y = M1, the top border edge of B2 is at y = max(M1,M2), and the bottom of F is at y = M1 + H.