text-emphasis-position

The text-emphasis-position CSS property describes where emphasis marks are drawn at. The effect of emphasis marks on the line height is the same as for ruby text: if there isn't enough place, the line height is increased.

The preferred position of emphasis marks depends on the language. In Japanese for example, the preferred position is over right. In Chinese, on the other hand, the preferred position is under right. The informative table below summarizes the preferred emphasis mark positions for Chinese and Japanese:

Preferred emphasis mark and ruby position

Language	Preferred position		Illustration
	Horizontal	Vertical
Japanese	over	right
Mongolian
Chinese	under	right

Initial value	over right
Applies to	all elements
Inherited	no
Media	visual
Computed value	as specified
Animation type	discrete
Canonical order	the unique non-ambiguous order defined by the formal grammar

Syntax

/* Initial value */
text-emphasis-position: over right;

/* Keywords value */
text-emphasis-position: over left;
text-emphasis-position: under right;
text-emphasis-position: under left;

/* Global values */
text-emphasis-position: inherit;
text-emphasis-position: initial;
text-emphasis-position: unset;

Values

over

Draw marks over the text in horizontal writing mode.

under

Draw marks under the text in horizontal writing mode.

right

Draws marks to the right of the text in vertical writing mode.

left

Draw marks to the left of the text in vertical writing mode.

Formal syntax

[ over | under ] && [ right | left ]

Examples

Some editors prefer to hide emphasis marks when they conflict with ruby. In HTML, this can be done with the following style rule:

ruby {
  text-emphasis: none;
}

Some other editors prefer to hide ruby when they conflict with emphasis marks. In HTML, this can be done with the following pattern:

em {
  text-emphasis: dot; /* Set text-emphasis for <em> elements */
}

em rt {
  display: none; /* Hide ruby inside <em> elements */
}

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
CSS Text Decoration Level 3 The definition of 'text-emphasis' in that specification.	Candidate Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] In Firefox 45, it wasn't activated by default: in about:config, the user has to set the preference layout.css.text-emphasis.enabled to true.

[2] See Chrome bug 522882.

See also

• The longhand properties text-emphasis-style, text-emphasis-color, and the corresponding shorthand property text-emphasis.