Is It Acceptable for CSS Code to Contradict Default CSS Code?

Imagine if my CSS looks like this:

div {
margin: 0;
overflow: auto;
padding: 1%;
text-align: center;
word-wrap: break-word;
}

This is supposed to be the default styling for all div elements. But what happens if there's another div with conflicting code:

div.a {
background-color: #ffffff;
border: 2px solid;
text-align: left;
}

While the background-color and border properties don't clash with the default, the text-align value does. The default setting is centered, but in this case, it's set to left. Surprisingly, browsers seem to handle this without any issues so far. However, I'm concerned whether it's still considered bad practice or could cause problems in the future.

Answer №1

In the world of style sheets, contradictions do not exist - selectors are either more specific (and therefore override less specific selectors), or they simply come later in the cascade and thus take precedence over previously defined rules.

For instance, in your scenario, the div.a selector is considered more specific because it targets a specific class rather than just the tag name. This means that regardless of whether the div.a rule is placed before or after the general div rules, the styles defined for div.a will always be applied due to its higher specificity.

Although specificity rules may appear intricate initially, with practice, you will quickly become accustomed to them.

https://css-tricks.com/specifics-on-css-specificity/

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