Stylesheet Language

Definition – What is Stylesheet Language

A stylesheet language is a specific type of computer language that represents the looks of a webpage in a web browser or other document. In general, a stylesheet language works with markup languages such as HTML, XHTML, XML, SVG  etc. Almost all stylesheet language works with the same formula. By using its properties (such as selector or value) a stylesheet language modifies the structured data and give different looks. In other words, it is used to design a webpage.

The widespread used stylesheet language is CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) and it is also web standard language. There are some other standard stylesheet languages can be referred such as Extensible (XSL), DSSSL etc. There are also exist non-standard language means rarely used languages such as FOSI, Qt, Less, Sass, Stylus etc.

Who learn Stylesheet Languages

Basically, in the web development industry, desktop publishing uses stylesheet language extensively. Web developers especially front-end web developers must have to learn stylesheet languages. If you want to learn web development then you should learn stylesheet (Recommended: CSS)  language after learning HTML.

Stylesheet Language


In order to understand by the computer, stylesheet language has syntax. For example here is a snippet of CSS code;

p { font-size: 20px; color: red;}


Every Stylesheet Language has selectors. It works for targeting a specific tag or attribute of a markup language. In the above code pis the selector that selects the <p> tag in order to modify looks as its defined value.

Values & Properties

Values define what properties to be modified. In the example abovefont-size is a property of css and 20px is a value.  There are more than 50 properties exists to describe the presentation of a document.