Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide

Specificity

Given the existence of inheritance, one might well wonder what happens in a circumstance such as this:

.grape {color: purple;}
H1 {color: red;}

<H1 CLASS="grape">Meerkat <EM>Central</EM></H1>

Since the selectors H1 and .grape can both match the H1 element shown, which one wins? As it happens, .grape is the correct answer, and so the H1 element will be colored purple. This happens because of the specificity of the two rules, and the rules CSS has to deal with such situations.

Specificity describes the relative weights of various rules. According to the specification, a simple selector (e.g., H1) has a specificity of 1, class selectors have a specificity of 10, and ID selectors a specificity of 100. Thus the following rules would have the noted specificity:

H1 {color: red;}                    /* specificity = 1 */
P EM {color: purple;}               /* specificity = 2 */
.grape {color: purple;}             /* specificity = 10 */
P.bright {color: yellow;}           /* specificity = 11 */
P.bright EM.dark {color: brown;}    /* specificity = 22 */
#id216 {color: blue;}               /* specificity = 100 */

Thus, the rule for #id216 has a much higher specificity, and therefore more weight, than any of the others listed. In cases where more than one rule can apply to an element, the styles with the higher weight win out.

Inheritance and Specificity

Within the framework of specificity, inherited values have, effectively, a specificity of 0. This means that any explicitly declared rule will override an inherited style. Therefore, no matter how much ...