Web Design Garage

Chapter 45. Changing the Look of a Text Element

In CSS, the simplest style selector is just the name of an HTML tag. The style definition for this simple selector determines how the browser displays the element wherever it appears on the page:

h1 {
  font-family: Arial;
  font-weight: bold;
}

p {
  font-family: Verdana;
}

So it goes for redefining the generic appearance of HTML text tags. But CSS allows you to choose much more specific selectors for entire sequences of tags to get precisely the typographical effect you have in mind, as Table 45.1 shows.

Table 45.1. CSS Selectors for HTML Tags

SELECTOR	DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLE SYNTAX	EXAMPLE DESCRIPTION
Simple	All HTML tags of a type	p	All paragraphs
Contextual	All HTML tags of a type that are somewhere within a ...