As a web designer, you probably spend more time working with text than any other element. With this concise guide, you’ll learn CSS3 properties for changing the appearance of text without altering the font face—including horizontal and vertical alignment, text transformation, word and letter spacing, text wrapping, and the direction of text flow.

This book is an excerpt from the upcoming fourth edition of CSS: The Definitive Guide. When you purchase either the print or the ebook edition of CSS Text, you’ll receive a discount on the entire Definitive Guide once it’s released. Why wait, when you can start manipulating text on your pages right away?

• Use properties for indenting and aligning lines of text


• Control the leading between lines of text beyond the font’s size


• Change the amount of space between words and individual characters


• Add underlines, overlines, strike-throughs, shadows, and other effects


• Instruct browsers to prioritize speed, legibility, or geometric precision when rendering text


• Learn how and when to suppress automatic hyphenation


• Determine the direction that text flows, including left-to-right and top-to-bottom