Eric Meyer on CSS: Mastering the Language of Web Design

Styling the Document for Print

Probably the easiest way to create a print style sheet is to create the print design you want onscreen and then simply mark the finished product so that it only applies to print media. When creating the print styles, it will be necessary to “zero out” the screen style sheet that already exists. This keeps it from getting mixed up with the print styles by mistake.

Suppressing Styles

Because we’re working with an existing design, the document already has a screen style sheet. What we need to do is prevent those styles from showing up onscreen while we work on the print styles. Why? Because the screen styles won’t be applied to the printed version of the document. If we mix the two style sheets onscreen and then ...