alt131 - 8:03 am on Oct 22, 2011 (gmt 0)

Hi Antony, good to see you back :) While I agree with topr8's statement that css affects style, not content - and personally believe it the two should be kept firmly separated, css does provide a way to generate content using the 12.2 The Content Property [w3.org] on 12.1 :before/:after pseudo-elements [w3.org]

So you could do something like
<p class="copy">Copyright </p>
and
p.copy:after {
content: " 1999-2011"
}

However, I think the real question is whether you should use style to do this as copyright is critical content and should therefore be in the HTML, plus pseudo elements are only supported by modern browsers. What is commonly used for this is something like a simple php include if your server allows. They are designed for exactly this sort of thing, and if you have been using HTML for 10 years you should be able to set one up quite easily. A search on "php includes" should bring up lots of easy tutorials explaining how.

The other issue to consider if whether the copyright date can change. We don't do legal advice at WebmasterWorld, so the following is not advice, only information to indicate why it is best to obtain advice from appropriate specialists: Basically, in many jurisdictions the author of an original work automatically has ownership from the date of creation (or in some jurisdictions some form of "publication"), but it means the date on which the work was created, and therefore the date from which copyright commences, does not/cannot change. But to emphasise - this is not legal advice, just general information about the underlying issues!

Awww ... Lucy's faster at typing than me ;)