Why isn't my !important attribute working in Google Chrome?

Question

I have two CSS files in my web app: reset.css and screen.css. They appear in that order in the html (reset then screen).

In the reset.css, the following style definition occurs:

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre, a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code, del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp, small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li, fieldset, form, label, legend, table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
  border-bottom-width:0;
  border-color:initial;
  border-left-width:0;
  border-right-width:0;
  border-style:initial;
  border-top-width:0;
  font-family:inherit;
  font-size:100%;
  font-style:inherit;
  font-weight:inherit;
  margin-bottom:0;
  margin-left:0;
  margin-right:0;
  margin-top:0;
  outline-color:initial;
  outline-style:initial;
  outline-width:0;
  padding-bottom:0;
  padding-left:0;
  padding-right:0;
  padding-top:0;
  vertical-align:baseline;
}

You can see that span is in this list, and by default has a font-size of 100%.

In my screen.css, I have the following:

dl.labels-left dt span.req {
  display:inline;
  font-size:14px !important;
}

My HTML has the following excerpt:

<div>
    <dl class="labels-left">
        <dt class="larger-a-left">
            <label>Name:</label>
            <span class="req">*</span>
        </dt>
...

The problem I'm having is that the font-size: 14px !important; is being overridden by the CSS in the reset file, but only in Google Chrome. I can't work out why!

Here's a Firebug Lite screenshot showing the font-size crossed out: Firebug Screenshot http://www.damianbrady.com.au/images/firebug_screenshot.png

Why is my reset.css style being considered more important than the specific class definition?

According to my understanding of W3C CSS 2.1 Specificity, this shouldn't happen!

Answer 1

Maybe the inspector is crossing it out improperly but visually it's right?