In CSS, some properties can be grouped together under another property, to save time and space. The font property regroups (in this particular order):
font-stylefont-variantfont-weightfont-sizeline-heightfont-family
You can thus define 6 properties through a single one:
body{ font: italic small-caps bold 16px/1.5 Arial, sans-serif;}They have to be written in this particular order and there must be a slash / between the font-size and the line-height.
Although I’ve defined all 6 properties, only the font-size and font-family are mandatory. You can thus omit to define the other properties if you intend to keep their default values:
body{ font: bold 16px/1.5 Arial, sans-serif;}Because font-style and font-variant have not been defined, they’ll use their default value normal.
Beware! If you’ve previously define one of the font properties and use the font shorthand afterwards, it will override the previously defined values.
body{ font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.5;}
ul{ font: 14px Georgia, serif;}In the font shorthand, the line-height has not been defined, and will lose its ancestor’s value of 1.5 and will revert to its default value medium (which is usually 1.2).
Other shorthand properties exist, like background, border and margin.