How to exclude a tag from css inheritance (:not is not working)

Question

I have an that I want to exclude from the general inheritance of the css. I have added ":not" on the css but it still passes the inheritance on the child. Also I have added both a new id and a new class and still doesn't follow non of them.

HTML code <a id="epLogin" href="#" class="pLogin" > GET ON TOP! </a> <a id="epLogin" href="#" class="pLogin" > GET ON TOP! </a>

CSS formating

a:hover,
a:active,
a:focus,
#Mainbody div.tags a:hover,
#Mainbody a:not(#epLogin) { 
    color: #3498db; 
}

#epLogin {
margin-top: 0px;
background: #00B5F7;
color: #fff;
font-weight: bold;
right: 20px;
height: 38px;
padding: 0 18px;
position: absolute;
top: 10px;
line-height: 39px;
}

Answer 1

You can't prevent element to inherit properties from their parents other than setting those properties to a specific value.

You can exclude an element from a selector, but then you have to do that for each variant of that selector:

a:not(#epLogin):hover,
a:not(#epLogin):active,
a:not(#epLogin):focus,
#Mainbody div.tags a:not(#epLogin):hover,
#Mainbody a:not(#epLogin)

But I wouldn't do that. It's much simpler to set a property to a basic value again. Especially when using a CSS preprocessor. For example:

a:hover, a:active, a:focus {
    color: #3498db;
}

#epLogin a:hover, #epLogin a:active, #epLogin a:focus {
    color: #fff;
}