How to increase the gap between text and underlining in CSS

374

votes

Using CSS, when text has text-decoration:underline applied, is it possible to increase the distance between the text and the underline?

cssunderline

This is not exactly what you were asking for, but it was an interesting read on the subject: CSS Design: Custom Underlines – Peter Rowell

The distance is determined by a font used. Try web-safe fonts. – Alexei Danchenkov

CSS3 has a lot of new text-decoration properties these days. Please check out alligator.io/css/text-decoration Example: text-underline-position: under; and text-decoration-skip: ink; Please note that this is probably not backward compatible with older browsers. – chocolata

Another good solution – w3spi

Vote for text-underline-offset here: bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/… – Mark Fisher

416

votes

No, but you could go with something like border-bottom: 1px solid #000 and padding-bottom: 3px.

If you want the same color of the "underline" (which in my example is a border), you just leave out the color declaration, i.e. border-bottom-width: 1px and border-bottom-style: solid.

For multiline, you can wrap you multiline texts in a span inside the element. E.g. <a href="#"><span>insert multiline texts here</span></a> then just add border-bottom and padding on the <span> - Demo

207

votes

Update 2021: text-underline-offset now works in almost all major and newest versions of browsers (IE11 is a no-go): https://caniuse.com/?search=text-underline-offset

Update 2019: The CSS Working Group has published a draft for text decoration level 4 which would add a new property text-underline-offset (as well as text-decoration-thickness) to allow control over the exact placement of an underline. As of this writing, it's an early-stage draft and has not been implemented by any browser, but it looks like it will eventually make the technique below obsolete.

Original answer below.

The problem with using border-bottom directly is that even with padding-bottom: 0, the underline tends to be too far away from the text to look good. So we still don't have complete control.

One solution that gives you pixel accuracy is to use the :after pseudo element:

a {
    text-decoration: none;
    position: relative;
}
a:after {
    content: '';

    width: 100%;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 1px;

    border-width: 0 0 1px;
    border-style: solid;
}

By changing the bottom property (negative numbers are fine) you can position the underline exactly where you want it.

One problem with this technique to beware is that it behaves a bit weird with line wraps.

108

votes

You can use this text-underline-position: under

See here for more detail: https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/t/text-underline-position/

See also browser compatibility.

28

votes

Here is what works well for me.

<style type="text/css">
  #underline-gap {
    text-decoration: underline;
    text-underline-position: under;
  }
</style>
<body>
  <h1 id="underline-gap"><a href="https://Google.com">Google</a></h1>
</body>

21

votes

just use

{
   text-decoration-line: underline;
   text-underline-offset: 2px;
}

11

votes

Getting into the details of the visual style of text-decoration:underline is pretty much futile, so you're going to have to go with some kind of hack the removes text-decoration:underline and replaces it with something else until a magical far-distant future version of CSS gives us more control.

This worked for me:

   a {
    background-image: linear-gradient(
        180deg, rgba(0,0,0,0),
        rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%, 
        #222222 81.1%,
        #222222 85%,
        rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%,
        rgba(0,0,0,0)
    );
    text-decoration: none;
}

<a href="#">Lorem ipsum</a> dolor sit amet, <a href="#">consetetur sadipscing</a> elitr, sed diam nonumy eirmod tempor <a href="#">invidunt ut labore.</a>

Adjust the % values (81% and 85%) to change how far the line is from the text
Adjust the difference between the two % values to change the line thickness
adjust the color values (#222222) to change the underline color
works with multiple line inline elements
works with any background

Here's a version with all the proprietary properties for some backwards compatibility:

a {     
    /* This code generated from: http://colorzilla.com/gradient-editor/ */
    background: -moz-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(0,0,0,0) 0%, rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%, rgba(0,0,0,1) 81.1%, rgba(0,0,0,1) 85%, rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%, rgba(0,0,0,0) 100%); /* FF3.6+ */
    background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,rgba(0,0,0,0)), color-stop(81%,rgba(0,0,0,0)), color-stop(81.1%,rgba(0,0,0,1)), color-stop(85%,rgba(0,0,0,1)), color-stop(85.1%,rgba(0,0,0,0)), color-stop(100%,rgba(0,0,0,0))); /* Chrome,Safari4+ */
    background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(0,0,0,0) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 81.1%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 85%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 100%); /* Chrome10+,Safari5.1+ */
    background: -o-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(0,0,0,0) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 81.1%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 85%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 100%); /* Opera 11.10+ */
    background: -ms-linear-gradient(top,  rgba(0,0,0,0) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 81.1%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 85%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 100%); /* IE10+ */
    background: linear-gradient(to bottom,  rgba(0,0,0,0) 0%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 81%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 81.1%,rgba(0,0,0,1) 85%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 85.1%,rgba(0,0,0,0) 100%); /* W3C */

    text-decoration: none;
}

Update: SASSY version

I made a scss mixin for this. If you don't use SASS, the regular version above still works great...

@mixin fake-underline($color: #666, $top: 84%, $bottom: 90%) {
    background-image: linear-gradient(
        180deg, rgba(0,0,0,0),
        rgba(0,0,0,0) $top,
        $color $top + 0.1%,
        $color $bottom,
        rgba(0,0,0,0) $bottom + 0.1%,
        rgba(0,0,0,0)
    );
    text-decoration: none;
}

then use it like so:

$blue = #0054a6;
a {
    color: $blue;
    @include fake-underline(lighten($blue,20%));
}
a.thick {
    color: $blue;
    @include fake-underline(lighten($blue,40%), 86%, 99%);
}

Update 2: Descenders Tip

If you have a solid background color, try adding a thin text-stroke or text-shadow in the same color as your background to make the descenders look nice.

Credit

This is simplified version of the technique I originally found at https://eager.io/app/smartunderline, but the article has since been taken down.

7

votes

I know it's an old question, but for single line text setting display: inline-block and then setting the height has worked well for me to control the distance between a border and the text.

6

votes

@last-child's answer is a great answer!

However, adding a border to my H2 produced an underline longer than the text.

If you're dynamically writing your CSS, or if like me you're lucky and know what the text will be, you can do the following:

change the content to something the right length (ie the same
text) set the font color to transparent (or rgba(0,0,0,0) )

to underline <h2>Processing</h2> (for example), change last-child's code to be:

a {
    text-decoration: none;
    position: relative;
}
a:after {
    content: 'Processing';
    color: transparent;

    width: 100%;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 1px;

    border-width: 0 0 1px;
    border-style: solid;
}

3

votes

See my fiddle.

You would need to use the border width property and the padding property. I added some animation to make it look cooler:

body{
  background-color:lightgreen;
}
a{
  text-decoration:none;
  color:green;
  border-style:solid;
  border-width: 0px 0px 1px 0px;
  transition: all .2s ease-in;
}

a:hover{
  color:darkblue;
  border-style:solid;
  border-width: 0px 0px 1px 0px;
  padding:2px;
}

<a href='#' >Somewhere ... over the rainbow (lalala)</a> , blue birds, fly... (tweet tweet!), and I wonder (hmm) about what a <i><a href="#">what a wonder-ful world!</a> World!</i>

2

votes

An alternative for multiline texts or links, you can wrap your texts in a span inside a block element.

<a href="#">
    <span>insert multiline texts here</span>
</a>

then you can just add border-bottom and padding on the <span>.

a {
  width: 300px;
  display: block;
}

span {
  padding-bottom: 10px;
  border-bottom: 1px solid #0099d3;
  line-height: 48px;
}

You may refer to this fiddle. https://jsfiddle.net/Aishaterr/vrpb2ey7/2/

2

votes

If you want:

multiline
dotted
with custom bottom padding
without wrappers

underline, you can use 1 pixel height background image with repeat-x and 100% 100% position:

display: inline;
background: url('data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAIAAAABCAYAAAD0In+KAAAAEUlEQVQIW2M0Lvz//2w/IyMAFJoEAis2CPEAAAAASUVORK5CYII=') repeat-x 100% 100%;

You can replace the second 100% by something else like px or em to adjust the vertical position of the underline. Also you can use calc if you want to add vertical padding, e.g.:

padding-bottom: 5px;
background-position-y: calc(100% - 5px);

Of course you can also make your own base64 png pattern with another color, height and design, e.g. here: http://www.patternify.com/ - just set square width & height at 2x1.

Source of inspiration: http://alistapart.com/article/customunderlines

2

votes

If you are using text-decoration: underline;, then you can add space between underline and text by using text-underline-position: under;

For more The text-underline-position properties, you can have look here

1

votes

This is what i use:

html:

<h6><span class="horizontal-line">GET IN</span> TOUCH</h6>

css:

.horizontal-line { border-bottom: 2px solid  #FF0000; padding-bottom: 5px; }

0

votes

I was able to Do it using the U (Underline Tag)

u {
    text-decoration: none;
    position: relative;
}
u:after {
    content: '';
    width: 100%;
    position: absolute;
    left: 0;
    bottom: 1px;
    border-width: 0 0 1px;
    border-style: solid;
}


<a href="" style="text-decoration:none">
    <div style="text-align: right; color: Red;">
        <u> Shop Now</u>
    </div>
</a>

0

votes

What I use:

<span style="border-bottom: 1px solid black"> Enter text here </span>

How to increase the gap between text and underlining in CSS

15 Answers