valid code question

From: Jordan Bradford <jordan_bradford@hotmail.com> Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 00:40:34 -0500 (EST) To: <www-validator-css@w3.org> Message-ID: <OE48KMm1gyXe4FTuBKW000132ca@hotmail.com> · This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0+W3C-0.50 : Friday, 20 March 2009 14:44:22 GMT

I've just started teaching myself CSS, so I used your validator to check a
simple stylesheet I created. The validator gave me the following warnings
(there are no line numbers -- sorry!, but each warning corresponds in order
to the declarations that follow):

Line : 2 Level : 1 You have no color with your background-color : body
Line : 13 Level : 1 You have no background-color with your color : a
Line : 16 Level : 1 You have no background-color with your color : a:visited
Line : 19 Level : 1 You have no background-color with your color : a:active
Line : 23 Level : 1 You have no background-color with your color : h6
Line : 27 Level : 1 You have no background-color with your color : p

body {
    background : gray;
}
a {
    color : navy;
}
a:visited {
    color : navy;
}
a:active {
    color : white;
}
h1 , h2 , h3 , h4 , h5 , h6 {
    color : navy;
}
p {
    color : white;
}

Why do I need to supply a background color for a <p> tag, or a color for the
<body> tag?

As long as I'm sending this email, is it better to use hex code for colors
or their names as I've done here?

Thanks.

-Jordan Bradford