Question

I was having a trouble of getting ul markers to fall inside the margin. I fixed it by changing

#contents ul {
border:solid;
    font-size:85%;
margin-left: 0px;
padding-left: 2.5em;
    max-width: inherit;
list-style-position: inside;
}

to

ul {
  /* rules */
}

Even though the ul in question is given the id of ‘contents’ it seems the rules only get passed down to its children? Or is there another reason for this mishap? I’d like to be able to limit the ul ruleset to the ‘contents’ id if possible.

Answer 1

With

#contents ul

You’re saying any <ul> that is a descendent of and element with id="contents" should be applied the styles. But you say you have

<ul id="contents">

so you can do

ul#contents {
  /* your rules */
}

Though this shouldn’t be necessary to qualify the selector with an element; #contents alone should be enough.

If you want both the <ul> with id="contents" and it’s descendents, you can do

#contents, #contents ul {
  /* your rules */
}