CSS Reference Property

text-decoration-line

The text-decoration-line property is used to add decoration to text in form of lines: above the text, below the text, or over the text, or to remove any existing decorations.

It also accepts a value which causes text to blink, and which, although valid, is now deprecated.

The text-decoration-line property accepts one or more whitespace-separated values.

Trivia & Notes

The line-through value is usually used to “strike out” lines of text that have been deleted or changed. Authors are encouraged in this case to use HTML elements such as <del> and <s> to preserve the semantics of such text, so that the meaning (Deletion) is still preserved even when styles are disabled on the page.

Anchor links have a default underline applied to them, which is good for accessibility, as some people depend on the presence of underlines to detect links on a page. So, even though removing the underlines is possible using text-decoration-line: none, it is highly recommended, for accessibility reasons, to keep the underlines or style them differently to match the overall style of the page, instead of completely removing them, unless another visual indication exists that indicates that a piece of text is in fact a link.

Official Syntax

  • Syntax:

    text-decoration: none | overline | line-through | underline | blink 
  • Initial: none
  • Applies To: all elements
  • Animatable: no

Values

none
No text decoration is added. If any decoration is applied it will be removed.
underline
Text is underlined. For multiple-line text, each line is underlined.
overline
Text has a line above it. For multiple-line text, each line of text has a line above it.
line-through
Text has a line passing through its middle. For multiple-line text, each line of text has a line through it.
blink
Makes text blink. This value is valid but is deprecated and browsers are allowed to ignore it.

Examples

The following line will underline all lines in all paragraphs of class underlined.

p.underlined {
    text-decoration: underline;
}
                

The following line will add a line under and another line above all h1 elements.

h1 {
    text-decoration: underline overline;
}
                

Browser Support

This property currently only works in Firefox 6+, and it needs the -moz- prefix.

Written by . Last updated February 4, 2015 at 4:11 pm by Manoela Ilic.

Do you have a suggestion, question or want to contribute? Submit an issue.