text-decoration

The text-decoration CSS property specifies the appearance of decorative lines used on text. It is a shorthand for setting one or more individual text-decoration values in a single declaration, which include text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, and text-decoration-style.

/* Keyword values */
text-decoration: none;                /* No text decoration */
text-decoration: underline red;       /* Red underlining */
text-decoration: underline wavy red;  /* Red wavy underlining */
/* Global values */
text-decoration: inherit;
text-decoration: initial;
text-decoration: unset;

<div>
  <span style = "text-decoration: underline;">underline</span>
  <span style = "text-decoration: red wavy underline;">red wavy underline</span>
  <span style = "text-decoration: underline overline blue;">underline overline blue</span>
</div>

* {
  box-sizing: border-box;
}
div {
  border: 5px solid #F4F7F8;
}
span {
  font-family: monospace;
  margin: 0.5em;
  padding: 1em 0;
  display:inline-block;
  font-size: 1.2em;
}

Text decorations are drawn across descendant text elements. This means that if an element specifies a text decoration, then a child element can't remove the decoration. For example, in the markup <p>This text has <em>some emphasized words</em> in it.</p>, the style rule p { text-decoration: underline; } would cause the entire paragraph to be underlined. The style rule em { text-decoration: none; } would not cause any change; the entire paragraph would still be underlined. However, the rule em { text-decoration: overline; } would cause a second decoration to appear on "some emphasized words".

Syntax

The text-decoration property is specified as one or more space-separated values representing the various longhand text-decoration properties.

Values

text-decoration-line

Sets the kind of decoration used, such as underline or line-through.

text-decoration-color

Sets the color of the decoration.

text-decoration-style

Sets the style of the line used for the decoration, such as solid, wavy, or dashed.

Formal syntax

<'text-decoration-line'> || <'text-decoration-style'> || <'text-decoration-color'>

Examples

.under {
  text-decoration: underline red;
}
.over {
  text-decoration: wavy overline lime;
}
.line {
  text-decoration: line-through;
}
.plain {
  text-decoration: none;
}
.underover {
  text-decoration: dashed underline overline;
}
.blink {
  text-decoration: blink;
}

<p class="under">This text has a line underneath it.</p>
<p class="over">This text has a line over it.</p>
<p class="line">This text has a line going through it.</p>
<p>This <a class="plain" href="#">link will not be underlined</a>,
    as links generally are by default. Be careful with removing
    the text decoration on anchors since users often depend on
    the underline to denote hyperlinks.</p>
<p class="underover">This text has lines above <em>and</em> below it.</p>
<p class="blink">This text might blink for you,
    depending on the browser you use.</p>

Specifications

Browser compatibility

[1] The blink value does not have any effect.

[2] Safari doesn't support text-decoration-style.

[3] This version of Gecko has a partial implementation.

See also

• The individual text-decoration properties are text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, and text-decoration-style.
• The list-style attribute controls the appearance of items in HTML <ol> and <ul> lists.