CSS text-emphasis-style

The CSS text-emphasis-style property sets the shape and fill style of the emphasis marks that are drawn above or below each character of text.

Emphasis marks are a typographic convention used primarily in East Asian writing systems — particularly Chinese and Japanese — as an alternative to bold or italic for highlighting important words. Each character receives one small mark, which can take a variety of shapes.

text-emphasis-style is a sub-property of the text-emphasis shorthand, which also allows setting the color in one declaration. You can use it alone alongside text-emphasis-color, or use the shorthand to set both at once.

Syntax

Possible Values

none: No emphasis marks are displayed. This is the initial value.
filled: The shape is filled with a solid color. If neither filled nor open is specified, filled is used by default.
open: The shape is hollow (outline only).
dot: Display small circles as marks. The filled version is U+2022 (•); the open version is U+25E6 (◦).
circle: Display large circles as marks. The filled version is U+25CF (●); the open version is U+25CB (○). This is the default shape in horizontal writing modes when no shape keyword is specified.
double-circle: Display double circles as marks. The filled version is U+25C9 (◉); the open version is U+25CE (◎).
triangle: Display triangles as marks. The filled version is U+25B2 (▲); the open version is U+25B3 (△).
sesame: Display sesame marks. The filled version is U+FE45 (﹅); the open version is U+FE46 (﹆). This is the default shape in vertical writing modes when no shape keyword is specified.
<string>: A quoted string of one character to use as the emphasis mark. For example, "★" or "•". If the string is longer than one character, the browser may truncate it to one character or ignore the declaration.

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: none
Applies To: All elements
Inherited?: Yes
Media: Visual
Animation Type: Not animatable (discrete)

Example Code

Working Example

CSS Specifications

The text-emphasis-style property is defined in CSS Text Decoration Module Level 3 (W3C Candidate Recommendation).

Browser Support

Browser support for CSS properties can vary, particularly for newer or experimental features. Check current browser compatibility before using a property in production, especially when supporting older browsers.

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

Initial Value

CSS properties have an initial value that applies when the property has not been explicitly set. The initial value is different from the value inherited from a parent element and may vary between properties.

Inheritance

Some CSS properties inherit their computed value from their parent element by default, while others do not. The inherit, initial, unset, and revert keywords can also be used to control how a property gets its value.

Vendor Prefixes

Most modern CSS properties use the standard, unprefixed syntax. Vendor-prefixed properties such as -webkit- are mainly relevant to older browser versions or specific features and should only be used when required by your browser support targets.