Styling inline XML tags with XSLT

This is a similar question to Style inline text along with nested tags with XSLT, but I can't comment to get clarification, so I will elaborate my specific scenario here. I basically have an XML document with the following structure:

<book>
    <chapter>
        <para>This is some text about <place>New York</place></para>
    </chapter>
</book>

I am using XSLT to output XHTML from my XML file, and I want to be able to put span tags or something around the content in the place tag in the example above. The purpose is so that I can style these segments of text with CSS. Following the example I referenced above, I added this:

<xsl:template match="book/chapter/para/place">
    <span class="place">
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </span>
</xsl:template>

When I load the XML document in the browser I get the error: "Error loading stylesheet: Parsing an XSLT stylesheet failed." (the stylesheet was loading properly before I added this part)

I'm assuming I lack some basic understanding of how xsl:apply-templates should be used. I would appreciate it if someone could point me in the direction of figuring this out.

Thanks!