09 Sep 2020

Child Combinator

A child combinator is used to select only the immediate child elements of a parent element, ignoring any nested elements that are further down the HTML tree.

p > a:hover {
    color: red;
}

Do I need ‘>’ ?

No. The > symbol is used to select only the direct child a elements of p elements, ignoring any nested a elements that might be inside other elements inside the p element.

However, if you remove the > symbol from the CSS selector, like this:

p a:hover {
    color: red;
}

Then the CSS selector will select all a elements that are descendants of p elements, including any nested a elements that might be inside other elements inside the p element.