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Added documentation that sibling combinators to the right of :scope never match #43743

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Added documentation that sibling combinators to the right of :scope never match #43743

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narasimhan-lakshmi Apr 11, 2026
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Merge branch 'main' into update/docx-after-scope
narasimhan-lakshmi Apr 11, 2026
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18 changes: 18 additions & 0 deletions files/en-us/web/css/reference/selectors/_colon_scope/index.md
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Expand Up @@ -31,6 +31,24 @@ Which element(s) `:scope` matches depends on the context in which it is used:

## Examples

### Sibling combinators to the right of `:scope` never match

The relationship defined by `:scope` is always ancestor-to-descendant from the scope root. Because of that, putting a sibling combinator to the right of `:scope` creates a selector that can never match.

```css
:scope + p {
color: red;
}

:scope ~ * {
color: red;
}
```

In this case, no element can be both "a sibling of `:scope`" and also inside the same scoped matching relationship, so these selectors never produce a match.

In Firefox, selectors like these can trigger a warning in DevTools because they will never match.

### Using `:scope` as an alternative to `:root`

This example shows that `:scope` is equivalent to `:root` when used at the root level of a stylesheet. In this case, the provided CSS colors the background of the `<html>` element orange.
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