Plain old {background:#fff;} is even shorter than {background-color:#fff}, too. The only reason to use the verbose declarations is in jQuery where a specific p

Plain old {background:#fff;} is even shorter than {background-color:#fff}, too. The only reason to use the verbose declarations is in jQuery where a specific part of an element attribute is updated, and resetting everything else is not wanted. I.E. {background:#ddd url(somefile.png) no-repeat} => {background:#fff} In the above case, the image background would be dropped.