Trying to change elementWidth

Hi

I'm using the following code:

import arcpy
mxd = arcpy.mapping.MapDocument(r"C:\Courtney\TEST.mxd")
for elm in arcpy.mapping.ListLayoutElements(mxd, "TEXT_ELEMENT"):
if elm.name == "author":
elm.text = '<dyn type="document" property="author"/>'
elmWidth = 2.5
elm.elementPositionX = 3.23
elm.elementPositionY = 8.54
print elmWidth

prints 2.5

The script runs fine but when I open the mxd the xy position is changed but not the elmWidth, is there another way to change
element width bc I've tried it a bunch of times and nothing works.

Also is there a better script to add title, author, dataframe time to the layout without having to set each xy position and element width?

Thank you