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You can place HTML style tags in <head> or <body> elements. We'd recommend choosing the first option, as that allows you to keep the content and styling information separate. Note: you can also use <link> elements to apply styles kept in external stylesheets.
You can add multiple styling properties at once when using the HTML style attribute - just make sure to separate the name-value pairs with commas. Using a separate stylesheet is very convenient for styling multiple pages, as it's easier to apply changes to one document than to each page separately.
The <style> element must be included inside the <head> of the document. In general, it is better to put your styles in external stylesheets and apply them using <link> elements.
CSS can be added to HTML documents in 3 ways: Inline - by using the style attribute inside HTML elements. Internal - by using a <style> element in the <head> section.
As others have already mentioned, HTML 4 requires the <style> tag to be placed in the <head> section (even though most browsers allow <style> tags within the body).
However, HTML 5 includes the scoped attribute (see update below), which allows you to create style sheets that are scoped within the parent element of the <style> tag. This also enables you to place <style> tags within the <body> element:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<div id="scoped-content">
<style type="text/css" scoped>
h1 { color: red; }
</style>
<h1>Hello</h1>
</div>
<h1>
World
</h1>
</body>
</html>
If you render the above code in an HTML-5 enabled browser that supports scoped, you will see the limited scope of the style sheet.
There's just one major caveat...
At the time I'm writing this answer (May, 2013) almost no mainstream browser currently supports the scoped attribute. (Although apparently developer builds of Chromium support it.)
HOWEVER, there is an interesting implication of the scoped attribute that pertains to this question. It means that future browsers are mandated via the standard to allow <style> elements within the <body> (as long as the <style> elements are scoped.)
So, given that:
scoped attribute<style> tags within the <body>
<style> tags within the <body>
...then there is literally no harm * in placing <style> tags within the body, as long as you future proof them with a scoped attribute. The only problem is that current browsers won't actually limit the scope of the stylesheet - they'll apply it to the whole document. But the point is that, for all practical purposes, you can include <style> tags within the <body> provided that you:
scoped attribute<body> will not actually be scoped (because no mainstream browser support exists yet)
* except of course, for pissing off HTML validators...
Finally, regarding the common (but subjective) claim that embedding CSS within HTML is poor practice, it should be noted that the whole point of the scoped attribute is to accommodate typical modern development frameworks that allow developers to import chunks of HTML as modules or syndicated content. It is very convenient to have embedded CSS that only applies to a particular chunk of HTML, in order to develop encapsulated, modular components with specific stylings.
Update as of Feb 2019, according to the Mozilla documentation, the scoped attribute is deprecated. Chrome stopped supporting it in version 36 (2014) and Firefox in version 62 (2018). In both cases, the feature had to be explicitly enabled by the user in the browsers' settings. No other major browser ever supported it.
BREAKING BAD NEWS for "style in body" lovers: W3C has recently lost the HTML war against WHATWG, whose versionless HTML "Living Standard" has now become the official one, which, alas, does not allow STYLE in the BODY. The short-lived happy days are over. ;) The W3C validator also works by the WHATWG specs now. (Thanks @FrankConijn for the heads-up!)
(Note: this is the case "as of today", but since there's no versioning, links can become invalid at any moment without notice or control. Unless you're willing to link to its individual source commits at GitHub, you basically can no longer make stable references to the new official HTML standard, AFAIK. Please correct me if there's a canonical way of doing this properly.)
OBSOLETED GOOD NEWS:
Yay, STYLE is finally valid in BODY, as of HTML5.2!
(And scoped is gone, too.)
From the W3C specs (relish the last line!):
4.2.6. The style element
...
Contexts in which this element can be used:
Where metadata content is expected.
In a noscript element that is a child of a head element.
In the body, where flow content is expected.
META SIDE-NOTE:
The mere fact that despite the damages of the "browser war" we still had to keep developing against two ridiculously competing "official" HTML "standards" (quotes for 1 standard + 1 standard < 1 standard) means that the "fallback to in-the-trenches common sense" approach to web development has never really ceased to apply.
This may finally change now, but citing the conventional wisdom: web authors/developers and thus, in turn, browsers should ultimately decide what should (and shouldn't) be in the specifications, when there's no good reason against what's already been done in reality. And most browsers have long supported STYLE in BODY (in one way or another; see e.g. the scoped attr.), despite its inherent performance (and possibly other) penalties (which we should decide to pay or not, not the specs.). So, for one, I'll keep betting on them, and not going to give up hope. ;) If WHATWG has the same respect for reality/authors as they claim, they may just end up doing here what the W3C did.
When I see that the big-site Content Management Systems routinely put some <style> elements (some, not all) close to the content that relies on those classes, I conclude that the horse is out of the barn.
Go look at page sources from cnn.com, nytimes.com, huffingtonpost.com, your nearest big-city newspaper, etc. All of them do this.
If there's a good reason to put an extra <style> section somewhere in the body -- for instance if you're include()ing diverse and independent page elements in real time and each has an embedded <style> of its own, and the organization will be cleaner, more modular, more understandable, and more maintainable -- I say just bite the bullet. Sure it would be better if we could have "local" style with restricted scope, like local variables, but you go to work with the HTML you have, not the HTML you might want or wish to have at a later time.
Of course there are potential drawbacks and good (if not always compelling) reasons to follow the orthodoxy, as others have elaborated. But to me it looks more and more like thoughtful use of <style> in <body> has already gone mainstream.
Not valid HTML, anyway pretty much every browser seems to consider just the second instance.
Tested under the last versions of FF and Google Chrome under Fedora, and FF, Opera, IE, and Chrome under XP.
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