CSS 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. 

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Text Color

The color property is used to set the color of the text.

With CSS, a color is most often specified by:

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

Look at CSS Color Values for a complete list of possible color values.

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);
}

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

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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;
}

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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;
}

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

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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;
}

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Text Indentation

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

Example

p {
    text-indent: 50px;
}

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All CSS Text Properties

Property	Description
color	Sets the color of text
direction	Specifies the text direction/writing direction
letter-spacing	Increases or decreases the space between characters in a text
line-height	Sets the line height
text-align	Specifies the horizontal alignment of text
text-decoration	Specifies the decoration added to text
text-indent	Specifies the indentation of the first line in a text-block
text-shadow	Specifies the shadow effect added to text
text-transform	Controls the capitalization of text
unicode-bidi	Used together with the direction property to set or return whether the text should be overridden to support multiple languages in the same document
vertical-align	Sets the vertical alignment of an element
white-space	Specifies how white-space inside an element is handled
word-spacing	Increases or decreases the space between words in a text