Can Child Elements Override the CSS `text-decoration` Property?

Overriding CSS text-decoration Property in Child Elements

In CSS, certain properties can be overridden by child elements, while others cannot. The text-decoration property falls into the latter category.

When applied to a parent element, text-decoration affects the entire element, including any descendant elements. This means that child elements cannot override the text-decoration property of their ancestors.

According to the CSS text-decoration specification:

"The 'text-decoration' property on descendant elements cannot have any effect on the decoration of the ancestor."

This is because text decorations are drawn across the entire parent element, ignoring any descendant elements.

Understanding Overridable Properties

CSS properties that can be overridden by child elements generally fall into the following categories:

• Font properties (e.g., color, font-family)
• Size and position properties (e.g., width, height, margin)
• Visibility properties (e.g., display, visibility)

Properties that cannot be overridden by child elements include:

• Inline formatting properties (e.g., text-transform, text-decoration)
• Background properties (e.g., background-color, background-image)
• Border properties (e.g., border-color, border-width)

CSS3 text-decoration-skip Property

In CSS3, a new property called text-decoration-skip was introduced to address limitations with text-decoration overriding. This property allows child elements to skip over specific types of text decoration applied to their ancestors.

For example:

span {
    text-decoration-skip: underlines;
}

By setting text-decoration-skip to "underlines", the span element will skip any underlined text decoration applied to its parent element.

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