Question

Can I override my <p> style, having my class mainbookingleftadditional font style work instead?

code:

<div class="mainbookingleftadditional"><p>Please inform us of anything you... </p></div>

css:

p  {font-size:14px;}

.mainbookingleftadditional {
    float: left;
    width: 228px;
    height: auto;
    padding: 0px 20px 0px 0px;
    font: 8px "Trebuchet MS", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans", Arial, sans-serif;
    color: #FFFFFF;
    text-align: left;
    vertical-align: top;
    clear:both;
}

Regards,
Tea

Answer 1

If you wish to only change the property for every p inside every mainbookingleftadditional, you can use the following:

.mainbookingleftadditional p  {font-size:8px;}

this will override the regular p definition because it has a higher specificity (more specific)

Specificity is what decides which css definitions your element will use, in case some elements have more than one definition.

EDIT:

Seeing the other answers i must add that using !important for such a case is a bad idea.

!important is a very powerful case and should only be used when all other options are depleted.