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CSS Syntax

Syntax

The CSS syntax is made up of three parts: a selector, a property and a value:

selector {property: value}

The selector is normally the element/tag you wish to define, the property is the attribute you wish to change, and each property can take a value. The property and value are separated by a colon and surrounded by curly braces:

body {color: black}

If  the value is multiple words, put quotes around the value:

p {font-family: "sans serif"}

Note: If you wish to specify more than one property, you should separate each property with a semi-colon. The example below shows how to define a center aligned paragraph, with a red text color:

p {text-align: center; color: red}

To make the style definitions more readable, you can describe one property on each line, like this:

p
{
text-align: center;
color: black;
font-family: arial
}

Grouping

You can group selectors. Separate each selector with a comma. In the example below we have grouped all the header elements. Each header element will be green:

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 
{
color: green
}

The class Attribute

With the class attribute you can define different styles for the same element. Say that you would like to have two types of paragraphs in your document: one right-aligned paragraph, and one center-aligned paragraph. Here is how you can do it with styles:

p.right {text-align: right}
p.center {text-align: center}

You have to use the class attribute in your HTML document:

<p class="right">
This paragraph will be right-aligned.
</p> 

<p class="center">
This paragraph will be center-aligned.
</p> 

You can also omit the tag name in the selector to define a style that can be used by many elements:

.center {text-align: center}

In the code below both the h1 element and the p element are classed with "center". This means that both of the elements will follow the rules in the ".center" selector:  

<h1 class="center">
This heading will be center-aligned
</h1>

<p class="center">
This paragraph will also be center-aligned.
</p> 

The id Attribute

The id attribute can be defined in two ways. It can be defined to match all elements with a particular id, or to match only one element with a particular id.

<p id="intro">
This paragraph will be right-aligned.
</p>

In this example the id attribute will match all elements with id="intro":

#intro
{
font-size:110%;
font-weight:bold;
color:#0000ff;
background-color:transparent
}

In this example the id attribute will match only p elements with id="intro":

p#intro
{
font-size:110%;
font-weight:bold;
color:#0000ff;
background-color:transparent
}

CSS Comments

You can insert comments in CSS to explain your code, which can help you when you edit the source code at a later date. A comment will be ignored by the browser. A CSS comment begins with "/*", and ends with "*/", like this:

/* This is a comment */
p
{
text-align: center;
/* This is another comment */
color: black;
font-family: arial
}

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