:only-of-type

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Sara Cope on (Updated on )

The :only-of-type pseudo-class selector in CSS represents any element that has no siblings of the given type.

p:only-of-type {
  color: red;
}

If no tag precedes the selector, it will match any tag (e.g. :only-of-type). If another selector precedes it, it will matched based on the type of tag that selector matches. For example .example:only-of-type will behave like p:only-of-type if .example is applied to a paragraph element.

Simple Example

One list contains only a single list item. Another list contains three list items. We can target the list item that is alone with :only-of-type.

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Although perhaps that isn’t the best example, because :only-child would work just as well there since list items are the only possible children of lists. If we use divs instead, we could target a paragraph inside a div if it’s the only paragraph, despite other elements being in there as well.

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To Note

As a fun aside, you could achieve the same selection as :only-of-type with :first-of-type:last-of-type or :nth-of-type(1):nth-last-of-type(1). Those use two chained selectors though, meaning the specificity is double that of :only-of-type.

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