inheritance definition

A document’s elements create a hierarchy with the root element located at the top and the remaining document parts sprawled out beneath it.  Within an HTML document, the body and head elements are located beneath the html element.  Ancestor elements are located higher in the tree-like structure and their descendents are located below them.  CSS refers to the document structure to determine inheritance (refers to how a style is inherited by the descendents of an element).  Inheritance can be overruled by a style rule that is immediately applied to an element.  Values that are inherited do not possess specificity.  It is important to realize that some elements are not inherited.  A property will define if it is inherited; examples of elements that are not inherited include such elements such as background, margin, border and padding.