Actually while what you say about calling theme('add_style', drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule').'/mymodule.css'); instead of theme_add_style(drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule')).'/mymodule.css'); makes sense, it has the un-intended side effect of initializing the theme subsystem and making it hard/impossible to override the theme being used. This is in part due to the css/js being included in the menu hook which is also often used as a place to overrride themes. I would argue the answer is not to use a theme function (i.e. theme_add_style) since the direct call means it can not be override any how. It seems that a more general solution should be provided that takes the files to add (mymodule.css) and a prefereed path ( drupal_get_path('module', 'mymodule')) which is used if the file (mymodule.css) does not exist in the "current" themes directory. Steve Ringwood