A CSS Reset (or “Reset CSS”) is a short, often compressed (minified) set of CSS rules that resets the styling of all HTML elements to a consistent baseline. In case you didn’t know, every browser has its own default ‘user agent’ stylesheet, that it uses to make unstyled websites appear more legible.

For example: Most browsers by default make links blue and visited links purple, give tables a certain amount of border and padding, apply variable font-sizes to H1, H2, H3 etc. and a certain amount of padding to almost everything.

Ever wondered why Submit buttons look different in every browser? Obviously this creates a certain amount of headaches for CSS authors, who can’t work out how to make their websites look the same in every browser. If your static website’s css file or your WordPress theme does not already have a reset in place (most do) you can add the following code to the top of your style.css file to perform a comprehensive reset on all CSS elements.

/* CSS Reset ----------- */

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td,
article, aside, canvas, details, embed, 
figure, figcaption, footer, header, hgroup, 
menu, nav, output, ruby, section, summary,
time, mark, audio, video {
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	border: 0;
	font-size: 100%;
	font: inherit;
	vertical-align: baseline;
}

For older browser use the following:

/* HTML5 display-role reset for older browsers ----------- */
article, aside, details, figcaption, figure, 
footer, header, hgroup, menu, nav, section {
	display: block;
}
body {
	line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
	list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
	quotes: none;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
	content: '';
	content: none;
}
table {
	border-collapse: collapse;
	border-spacing: 0;
}