text-decoration

Baseline Widely available *

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

* Some parts of this feature may have varying levels of support.

The text-decoration shorthand CSS property sets the appearance of decorative lines on text. It is a shorthand for text-decoration-line, text-decoration-color, text-decoration-style, and the newer text-decoration-thickness property.

Try it

text-decoration: underline;

text-decoration: underline dotted;

text-decoration: underline dotted red;

text-decoration: green wavy underline;

text-decoration: underline overline #ff3028;


  
    I'd far rather be
    happy than right
    any day.

p {
  font: 1.5em sans-serif;
}

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

This text has some emphasized words in it.

, 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".

Constituent properties

This property is a shorthand for the following CSS properties:

Syntax

css

text-decoration: underline;
text-decoration: overline red;
text-decoration: none;

/* Global values */
text-decoration: inherit;
text-decoration: initial;
text-decoration: revert;
text-decoration: revert-layer;
text-decoration: unset;

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.
text-decoration-thickness: Sets the thickness of the line used for the decoration.

Formal definition

Initial value	as each of the properties of the shorthand: `text-decoration-color`: `currentcolor` `text-decoration-style`: `solid` `text-decoration-line`: `none`
Applies to	all elements. It also applies to `::first-letter` and `::first-line`.
Inherited	no
Computed value	as each of the properties of the shorthand: `text-decoration-line`: as specified `text-decoration-style`: as specified `text-decoration-color`: computed color `text-decoration-thickness`: as specified
Animation type	as each of the properties of the shorthand: `text-decoration-color`: a color `text-decoration-style`: discrete `text-decoration-line`: discrete `text-decoration-thickness`: by computed value type

Formal syntax

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

 = 
  none                                                |
  [ underline || overline || line-through || blink ]  

 = 
  solid   |
  double  |
  dotted  |
  dashed  |
  wavy    

 =

Examples

Demonstration of text-decoration values

css

.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;
}

.thick {
  text-decoration: solid underline purple 4px;
}

.blink {
  text-decoration: blink;
}

html

This text has a line underneath it.
This text has a line over it.
This text has a line going through it.

  This link will not be underlined, as links
  generally are by default. Be careful when removing the text decoration on
  anchors since users often depend on the underline to denote hyperlinks.

This text has lines above and below it.

  This text has a really thick purple underline in supporting browsers.


  This text might blink for you, depending on the browser you use.

Result

Specifications

Specification
CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 # text-decoration-property
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 2 # TextDecorationProperties