Styling Text

text formatting

This text is styled with some of the text formatting properties. The heading uses the text-align, text-transform, and color properties. The paragraph is indented, aligned, and the space between characters is specified.

Text Color

The color property is used to set the color of the text. The color can be specified by:

  • name - a color name, like "red"
  • RGB - an RGB value, like "rgb(255,0,0)"
  • Hex - a hex value, like "#ff0000"

The default color for a page is defined in the body selector.

Example

body {color:blue;}
h1 {color:#00ff00;}
h2 {color:rgb(255,0,0);}


For W3C compliant CSS: If you define the color property, you must also define the background-color property.

Text Alignment

The text-align property is used to set the horizontal alignment of a text.

Text can be centered, or aligned to the left or right, or justified.

When text-align is set to "justify", each line is stretched so that every line has equal width, and the left and right margins are straight (like in magazines and newspapers).

Example

h1 {text-align:center;}
p.date {text-align:right;}
p.main {text-align:justify;}

 

Text Decoration

The text-decoration property is used to set or remove decorations from text.

The text-decoration property is mostly used to remove underlines from links for design purposes:

Example

a {text-decoration:none;}

It can also be used to decorate text:

Example

h1 {text-decoration:overline;}
h2 {text-decoration:line-through;}
h3 {text-decoration:underline;}
h4 {text-decoration:blink;}


Remark It is not recommended to underline text that is not a link, as this often confuses users.

Text Transformation

The text-transform property is used to specify uppercase and lowercase letters in a text.

It can be used to turn everything into uppercase or lowercase letters, or capitalize the first letter of each word.

Example

p.uppercase {text-transform:uppercase;}
p.lowercase {text-transform:lowercase;}
p.capitalize {text-transform:capitalize;}

 

Text Indentation

The text-indentation property is used to specify the indentation of the first line of a text.

Example

p {text-indent:50px;}


 

All CSS Text Properties

The number in the "CSS" column indicates in which CSS version the property is defined (CSS1 or CSS2).

Property Description Values CSS
color Sets the color of a text color 1
direction Sets the text direction ltr
rtl		 2
line-height Sets the distance between lines normal
number
length
%		 1
letter-spacing Increase or decrease the space between characters normal
length		 1
text-align Aligns the text in an element left
right
center
justify		 1
text-decoration Adds decoration to text none
underline
overline
line-through
blink		 1
text-indent Indents the first line of text in an element length
%		 1
text-shadow none
color
length
text-transform Controls the letters in an element none
capitalize
uppercase
lowercase		 1
unicode-bidi normal
embed
bidi-override		 2
vertical-align Sets the vertical alignment of an element baseline
sub
super
top
text-top
middle
bottom
text-bottom
length
%		 1
white-space Sets how white space inside an element is handled normal
pre
nowrap		 1
word-spacing Increase or decrease the space between words normal
length		 1