specified value

The specified value of a CSS property is set in one out of three ways.

1. If the document's stylesheet has specified a value for the property then it will be used. For example; if the color property is set to green then the text color of the corresponding element will be green.
2. If the document's stylesheet has not specified a value then it will be inherited form the parent element (if possible). For example; if we have a paragraph (<p>) inside a <div> and the <div> has a CSS font property value of "Arial" and the <p> doesn't have a font property defined then it will inherit the Arial font.
3. If none of the above are available, the initial value for the element as specified by the CSS specification is applied.

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Level 2 (Revision 1) The definition of 'cascaded value' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

See also

• CSS Reference
• CSS Key Concepts: CSS syntax, at-rule, comments, specificity and inheritance, the box, layout modes and visual formatting models, and margin collapsing, or the initial, computed, resolved, specified, used, and actual values. Definitions of value syntax, shorthand properties and replaced elements.