CSS style rules “cascade” in the sense that they follow an order of precedence. Global style rules apply first to HTML elements, and local style rules override them. For example, a style defined in a style element in a webpage overrides a style defined in an external style sheet. Similarly, an inline style that is defined in an HTML element in the page overrides any styles that are defined for that same element elsewhere.
The !important rule is a way to make your CSS cascade but also have the rules you feel are most crucial always be applied. A rule that has the !important property will always be applied no matter where that rule appears in the CSS document. So if you wanted to make sure that a property always applied, you would add the !important property to the tag. So, to make the paragraph text always red, in the above example, you would write:
p { color: #ff0000 !important; }
p { color: #000000; }
