Question

I have an area that is identified by a #id and there is a CSS like:

#id ul li {
    margin:0;
}

can I, for a specific UL in that area, override the margin-setting? I understand that #id creates very high priority in evaluating the formatting.

I have tried:

.myclass ul li {
    margin-left: 20px;
}

and

#id ul.myclass {

as well as

#id li.myclass {

Is it even possible?

Answer 1

I agree with SWilk, avoid !important if possible (and it is possible here). Some other solutions that SWilk did not offer is:

#id ul.myclass li {

or…

#id ul li.myclass {

The key is increasing the specificity of the selector, which the above, and SWilk’s solutions do. The reason your original solutions did not work is that you did not include the other tag (ul or li) nor the #id with your addition of the .myclass.

Added after your comment that showed structure:

If your html is this (as you stated in your comment):

<div id="ja-col2">
  <div>.... 
    <ul class="latestnews">
      <li class="latestnews">

And your current css is (as stated in another comment):

#ja-col1 ul li, 
  #ja-col2 ul li { 
    margin:0; padding-left:15px; 
  } 
#ja-col2 .latestnews ul li, /*does not exist*/
  .latestnews #ja-col2 ul li, /*does not exist*/
  .latestnews ul li, /*does not exist*/
  ul.latestnews li.latestnews { 
     list-style:disc outside url("../images/bullet.gif"); 
     margin-left:15px; padding-left:15px; 
  } 
ul li { line-height:180%; margin-left:30px; }

The reason you are not seeing any change is because three of your selector paths do not exist in your html structure, and the one that wins by specificity is the very first group. You need:

#ja-col2 ul.latestnews li

To override the #ja-col2 ul li.