wordpress different post styles

in wordpress loops instead of that just add post_class().

<div id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>" <?php post_class(); ?>>

It can add the following classes which you can use as a hook for CSS-styling:

* .post-id
* .post (or .page or .attachment, depending on the post type)
* .sticky
* .hentry
* .category-misc
* .category-example
* .tag-news
* .tag-wordpress
* .tag-markup

using .category-example you can apply different styles to posts. so if you want to style post within specials category you can simply achieve this by applying style using

.category-specials
{
/*Your style here*/
}

So using this you can apply different styles to different categories.

Similarly if you want to style sticky posts you can achieve this by using

.sticky 
{
/*Your style here*/
}