Introduction to CSS - HTML and CSS: The Complete Reference - page 469

Would the contents of the <strong> tag enclosed in the <p> tag also be red? The answer is
yes, because the color is inherited from the parent element:

p {color:red;}

body

h1

p Red

strong Red

Whereas most elements can inherit the style features of their parents, some style properties
do not inherit. For example, consider setting the border property of the paragraph like so:

p {border: solid;}

If the enclosed <strong> tag from the previous example inherited the border, you would
expect to see something like this:

This is a test

However, this does not happen; the border is limited just to the paragraph itself because the
border value is not inherited. The reference in Chapter 5 will point out important non-
inheriting properties.
Assuming that a property does inherit, it is still possible to override the inheritance of
a property. For example, consider the following two rules:

p {color: red; font-size: xx-large;}
strong {color: yellow;}

In this case, the color of the text within the <strong> tag would be yellow and have an xx-
large size. Both of the properties were inherited, but the color property was overridden
by the color rule for the <strong> tag, which is more specific:

p {color:red; font-size: xx-large}
strong {color: yellow;}

body

p Red, xx-large

Override Inherit

strong Yellow, xx-large