CSS help plz

I'm just wondering what the priority is over which styles get taken notice of first, the hierarchy.

I have the follwoing styles

td.nav_top {}

a:active.nav_top {}

a:hover.nav_top {}

a:link.nav_top {}

a:visited.nav_top {}

and the html is this

<tr>
<td class="nav_top">Click <a class="nav_top" href="go.html">here</a> to go</td>
</tr>

So what gets preference? Does the <a> inherit <td> style?

Am I making sense, if not I can post the actual style info but I think it is to long.

it will take the css from the <a> tag first then from the </td> tag

so if the

td.nav_top {} is set to have say blinking text and in the
a:active.nav_top {} you dont tell it whether or not to have text-decorations then the link will blink as well, but if you set the text-decoration to none, then the normal text will blink but not the link

i hope that makes sence

Thanks for that, I have just been to a couple of sites and just figured that out.