Even though I already understand how to make/use external stylesheets, I read this tutorial (mainly because I am bored ;) )-- http://www.dont-stay.com/herwords/css.php
She mentions that with links, one thing is commonly left out- just "a". I know what the a:hover/link/visited/active do...but what is "a" by itself for, and is there a real purpose/use for it? Thanks :)

a does all of your links... like if you want all of your links (hover, visited, etc.) to have the same font, then there is no need to specify it over and over again so you would just do:

a{font-family: Arial;}

and then for the hover, visited, and the others you could just put things specific to what you want to happen for each type.

I'm not at all sure why shes saying to use both though. What monkey bizzle said is correct, if an attribute is to be the same on all of your links then put it in the A section, but i cant see the sense in setting the a as one thing and the others as something else as she has done in her example.

is she me? LOL

anyways... a better example i guess would be if you wanted all of your links to not be underlined... instead of putting text-decoration: none; in all the link sections, you could just put it in the a section...

The person who wrote that tutorial. They seem to be saying you should ALWAYS include just a...even when it isnt needed because each thing is going to have different attributes...which doesnt make sense to me.

Right, that's what confused me. When M.B. told me that it is used to combine everything, I thought "well why in the world does she (the tutorial writer) show a way to combine them and ALSO say to use the a (with no explination of it)?" Odd...
So using a or combining them all like shown in the tutorial do the same thing? Got it :) Thanks for clearing that up for me :)