The syntax of <custom-ident> is similar to CSS identifiers (such as property names), except that it is case-sensitive. It consists of one or more characters, where characters can be any of the following:

• any alphabetical character (A to Z, or a to z),
• any decimal digit (0 to 9),
• a hyphen (-),
• an underscore (_),
• an escaped character (preceded by a backslash, \),
• a Unicode character (in the format of a backslash, \, followed by one to six hexadecimal digits, representing its Unicode code point)

Note that id1, Id1, iD1 and ID1 are all different identifiers as they are case-sensitive. On the other hand, as there are several ways to escape a character, toto\? and toto\3F are the same identifiers.

A <custom-ident> must not be placed between single or double quotes as this would be identical to a <string>. Moreover, the first character must not be a decimal digit, nor a hyphen (-) followed by a decimal digit or another hyphen.

To prevent ambiguity, each property that uses <custom-ident> forbids the use of specific values:

animation-name

Forbids the global CSS values (unset, initial, and inherit), as well as none.

counter-reset, counter-increment

Forbids the global CSS values (unset, initial, and inherit), as well as none.

@counter-style, list-style-type

Forbids the global CSS values (unset, initial, and inherit), as well as the values:

• none
• inline
• outside

Also, quite a few predefined values are implemented by the different browsers:

• disc
• circle
• square
• decimal
• cjk-decimal
• decimal-leading-zero
• lower-roman
• upper-roman
• lower-greek
• lower-alpha
• lower-latin
• upper-alpha
• upper-latin
• arabic-indic
• armenian
• bengali
• cambodian
• cjk-earthly-branch
• cjk-heavenly-stem
• cjk-ideographic
• devanagari
• ethiopic-numeric
• georgian
• gujarati
• gurmukhi
• hebrew
• hiragana
• hiragana-iroha
• japanese-formal
• japanese-informal
• kannada
• katakana
• katakana-iroha
• khmer
• korean-hangul-formal
• korean-hanja-formal
• korean-hanja-informal
• lao
• lower-armenian
• malayalam
• mongolian
• myanmar
• oriya
• persian
• simp-chinese-formal
• simp-chinese-informal
• tamil
• telugu
• thai
• tibetan
• trad-chinese-formal
• trad-chinese-informal
• upper-armenian
• disclosure-open
• disclosure-close

grid-row-start, grid-row-end, grid-column-start, grid-column-end

Forbids the span value.

view-transition-name

Forbids the global CSS values (unset, initial, and inherit), as well as none.

will-change

Forbids the global CSS values (unset, initial, and inherit), as well as the values will-change, auto, scroll-position, and contents.

nono79            A mix of alphanumeric characters and numbers
ground-level      A mix of alphanumeric characters and a dash
-test             A dash followed by alphanumeric characters
_internal         An underscore followed by alphanumeric characters
\22 toto          A Unicode character followed by a sequence of alphanumeric characters
bili\.bob         A correctly escaped period

34rem             It must not start with a decimal digit.
-12rad            It must not start with a dash followed by a decimal digit.
bili.bob          Only alphanumeric characters, _, and - needn't be escaped.
--toto            It must not start with two dashes. This would be a custom property.
'bilibob'         This would be a <string>.
"bilibob"         This would be a <string>.

• <ident>
• <dashed-ident>