The UL Selector in the style sheet specifies that unordered lists should be maroon, therefore all LI elements will take on the color specified unless it is overridden by inheritence. In the example above, the UL Selector in the style sheet specified that the list items should be maroon. They inherited the Arial font from the BODY Declaration, the maroon color from the UL Declaration. Had a font-family been specified in the UL declaration, it would have over ridden the BODY selector declaration. Placing the same two lists into a table produces one maroon list, and one green one.
Inheritance is the answer.
Once the OL list was moved to the inside of a table it took on the color value set in the TD Declaration. The UL selector in the style sheet is more specific than the TD selector since the list is contained inside of the table. The cells in the table below are displaying the green text specified in the TD declaration. Notice though, that placing a P element inside of a table cell over rides the TD color value, replacing it with the P selectors color value. Table Cell 1 Table Cell 2 Table Cell 3 Elements that are not included in the style sheet as selectors will inherit the properties of their parent element.