Why Don't CSS Named Grid Areas Require Quotes?

Why are CSS named grid areas not in quotes?

As per the CSS Grid specification, the value for grid-area is defined as a grid-line, which utilizes the custom-ident type. However, according to the MDN documentation, identifiers cannot be quoted, as that would result in a string value instead. This raises the question of why named grid areas must be accessed using an ID without quotes.

To illustrate the issue, consider the following example:

.grid {
  display: grid;
  grid: "a b" 1fr "c d" 1fr / 1fr 1fr;
}

.foo {
  /* This works as expected, assigning the element to area 'b' in the upper right corner */
  grid-area: b;
}

.bar {
  /* Quoting the area name fails to resolve correctly */
  grid-area: "c";
}

<div class="grid">
  <span class="foo">foo</span>
  <span class="bar">bar</span>
  <span class="hello">hello</span>
</div>

In this example, the foo element is assigned to the b area using the unquoted grid-area: b. However, when attempting to assign bar to the c area using the quoted grid-area: "c", it fails to resolve correctly.

This seemingly counterintuitive behavior arises from the decision to use custom identifiers – rather than strings – to represent named grid areas. Typically, CSS properties utilize identifiers for their values, with exceptions such as font-family, content, and grid-template-areas using quoted strings.

The reasoning behind the choice

The CSS Grid spec developers opted for identifiers over strings for named grid areas, primarily for consistency with the rest of the CSS specification. From a 2013 discussion among spec writers:

[Using identifiers] has the benefit of:

• Using identifiers, consistent with the rest of CSS
• Providing visual grouping of names that identify the same location
• Allowing the named grid areas template syntax (which uses strings) to co-exist with named lines in the grid-template shorthand.

Additionally, as another discussion from 2013 highlights:

Looking over the current syntax for declaring named grid lines in grid-definition-rows/columns, we've come to the conclusion that the current syntax is terrible:

• We're using strings to represent a user-ident, which is inconsistent with everything else in CSS.

Conclusion

While there may not be a strong technical rationale for preferring identifiers specifically for named grid areas, the spec authors aimed for consistency with the general approach in CSS. By using identifiers, named grid areas align with the majority of CSS properties and provide a coherent user experience.

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