Why does linking a CSS file not work?

In your example, you only have to change the rel="Hope this works" to rel="stylesheet" in order for it to recognize it as a stylesheet, as demonstrated in the following:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="newcssstyle.css" type="text/css">

Setting the rel attribute value to stylesheet distinguishes the difference between, say, a stylesheet link and an icon image link. You can see all the possible values for the rel attribute on MDN.

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Furthermore, if it still doesn’t work, ensure that the file “newcssstyle.css” is in the same directory as the referenced HTML file. If you put it in a folder such as “stylesheets”, ensure that you add the relative folder path to your HTML file.

For example, if you had a directory like this:

• Parent Directory Name:
  • index.html
  • Stylesheets:
    • newcssstyle.css

Then you would reference “newcssstyle.css” (relative to “index.css”) as href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51661749/Stylesheets/newcssstyle.css"

Whereas, in a directory like this:

• Parent Directory Name:
  • Html_files:
    • index.html
  • Stylesheets:
    • newcssstyle.css

Then you would reference “newcssstyle.css” as href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51661749/Stylesheets/newcssstyle.css" instead (where .. means “go up one level to the parent directory”).