CSS text-decoration-skip

View Output

The CSS text-decoration-skip property specifies what parts of the element's content any text decoration affecting the element must skip over.

The text-decoration-skip property is used in conjunction with the text-decoration-line property (or the text-decoration shorthand property) to determine whether to skip certain parts of the line or not.

Syntax

Possible Values

none
Skip nothing: text-decoration is drawn for all text content and across atomic inline-level boxes.
objects
Skip this element (its entire margin box) if it is an atomic inline (such as an image or inline-block).
spaces
Skip all spacing, i.e. all characters with the Unicode White_Space property and all word separator characters, plus any adjacent letter-spacing or word-spacing.
ink
Skip over where glyphs are drawn: interrupt the decoration line to let the shape of the text show through where the text decoration would otherwise cross over a glyph.
edges
The start and end of the line is placed inwards slightly from the content edge of the decorating box so that, for example, two underlined elements side-by-side do not appear to have a single underline. (This is important in Chinese, where underlining is a form of punctuation.)
box-decoration
Skip over the box's margin, border, and padding areas. Note that this only has an effect on decorations imposed by an ancestor; a decorating box never draws over its own box decoration.

In addition, all CSS properties also accept the following CSS-wide keyword values as the sole component of their property value:

initial
Represents the value specified as the property's initial value.
inherit
Represents the computed value of the property on the element's parent.
unset
This value acts as either inherit or initial, depending on whether the property is inherited or not. In other words, it sets all properties to their parent value if they are inheritable or to their initial value if not inheritable.

Basic Property Information

Initial Value
Objects
Applies To
All elements
Inherited?
Yes
Media
Visual
Animatable
No

Example Code

Basic CSS

Here's an example of a basic declaration. A declaration consists of the property and its value.

So it could be used like this:

Working Example within an HTML Document

View Output

CSS Specifications

Browser Support

The following table provided by Caniuse.com shows the level of browser support for this feature.

Vendor Prefixes

For maximum browser compatibility many web developers add browser-specific properties by using extensions such as -webkit- for Safari, Google Chrome, and Opera (newer versions), -ms- for Internet Explorer, -moz- for Firefox, -o- for older versions of Opera etc. As with any CSS property, if a browser doesn't support a proprietary extension, it will simply ignore it.

This practice is not recommended by the W3C, however in many cases, the only way you can test a property is to include the CSS extension that is compatible with your browser.

The major browser manufacturers generally strive to adhere to the W3C specifications, and when they support a non-prefixed property, they typically remove the prefixed version. Also, W3C advises vendors to remove their prefixes for properties that reach Candidate Recommendation status.

Many developers use Autoprefixer, which is a postprocessor for CSS. Autoprefixer automatically adds vendor prefixes to your CSS so that you don't need to. It also removes old, unnecessary prefixes from your CSS.

You can also use Autoprefixer with preprocessors such as Less and Sass.