textdecoration

Text decoration refers to marks added to text to alter its appearance or convey emphasis. Common decorations include underlines, overlines, and strike-throughs, as well as decorative strokes used in headings or annotations. In typography more broadly, decorations can serve aesthetic or functional purposes, such as signaling links, emphasis, or editorial notes.

In digital typography, the primary mechanism is the CSS text-decoration feature. The standard property is text-decoration, which can be used as a shorthand to set line, style, and color. Although many people talk about "textdecoration" informally, the formal CSS term is text-decoration, with both a shorthand form and distinct longhand subproperties.

Longhand subproperties include text-decoration-line (none, underline, overline, line-through), text-decoration-style (solid, double, dotted, dashed, wavy), and text-decoration-color. Newer specifications introduce text-decoration-thickness, as well as related controls such as text-underline-offset and text-decoration-skip-ink, which refine how the decoration interacts with glyph shapes.

Usage considerations include typical applications like styling hyperlinks, titles, or emphasis. Designers may remove default underlines for aesthetic reasons, but it is important to maintain accessibility by ensuring sufficient contrast and by providing indicators beyond color or decoration alone, especially for focusable elements and screen readers.

Notes: the term "textdecoration" is not a separate CSS property; the standard mechanism is text-decoration. See also typography and CSS for further context.