Font Awesome Text-Decoration and Link Underline

By  on  

If I were to describe Font Awesome in a word, I think it would be...awesome.  The icon font library is massively helpful in using quality vector glyphs instead of  separate images.  I tend to use a lot of icons within links, as they help users to more quickly visually identify navigation.  One side effect of using icons within links is that the icons themselves now use the text-decoration of the link.  I really don't want icons underlined like the link -- it looks tacky.  Here's how I remove them!

The CSS

Using the root icon selector and :before, we can adjust the icon's display and text-decoration:

i[class^="icon-"]:before {
	display: inline-block;
	text-decoration: none;
}

Needing this snippet to avoid text-decoration is a recent change as Font Awesome originally used the above styles.  Keep this CSS code handy if you use Font Awesome!

Recent Features

  • By
    Designing for Simplicity

    Before we get started, it's worth me spending a brief moment introducing myself to you. My name is Mark (or @integralist if Twitter happens to be your communication tool of choice) and I currently work for BBC News in London England as a principal engineer/tech...

  • By
    9 Mind-Blowing Canvas Demos

    The <canvas> element has been a revelation for the visual experts among our ranks.  Canvas provides the means for incredible and efficient animations with the added bonus of no Flash; these developers can flash their awesome JavaScript skills instead.  Here are nine unbelievable canvas demos that...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create a Context Menu with Dojo and Dijit

    Context menus, used in the right type of web application, can be invaluable.  They provide shortcut methods to different functionality within the application and, with just a right click, they are readily available.  Dojo's Dijit frameworks provides an easy way to create stylish, flexible context...

  • By
    jQuery Wookmark

    The first thing that hits you when you visit Pinterest is "Whoa, the columns are the same width and the photos are cut to fit just the way they should."  Basic web users probably think nothing of it but as a developer, I can appreciate the...

Discussion

  1. Thanks for the snippet, I had the same issue and got to the same solution but was concerned about its performance.

    Anything you can say on this matter?

    • I can’t imagine this causing performance issues…

  2. Mircea

    Performance issues?

    p { color: #fff; } – my eight-core cpu is going full-load when renders this!

    WHAT A TWIST!

  3. Brandon

    Thanks for the tip. Here’s another similar service that’s amazing as well: http://icomoon.io/

  4. Does this still fix IE10? It’s broken for me. :(

  5. Stephen you might need to use

    i[class^="fa"]:before {
  6. Ah thanks! That one was driving me nuts. Didn’t think to try inline-block – i’ll get some more sleep tonight thanks to you :)

  7. nonsaprei

    Thanks, this trick worked for me even in 2020 with Font Awesome 5.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!