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Design Tip of the Week: Links & Text Decoration

Wednesday, September 23, 2009 by Christopher Studabaker
Blue, underlined text = link. It's an internet gold standard. More than that, linking is the fundamental component of hypertext. Over time, web and email users have learned that any underlined text usually means a link, and we've learned to expect other visual clues indicating a link, too. Using text in a navigation bar, changing text color, or highlighting text on mouse hover, for example, can all be used to imply that text is linked to a page or action. When it comes to underlining links (or not) in your email program, the style should match your brand guidelines - or at least mirror the styles used in your website.

Email clients are typically going to underline links by default. You can remove the underline, but to do so you'll need to apply the following inline style to each link (<a> tag) in your code:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: none; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

However, even if you want links to be underlined it's important to explicitly state the text decoration to achieve consistent results. A few email clients (such as Hotmail) don't underline links unless you specify this value. To force link underlining in all email clients, use the following inline style on each link:

<a href="http://blog.exacttarget.com/blog/the-exacttarget-blog" style="text-decoration: underline; color: #e39312;">The ExactTarget Blog</a>

Underlined or not, assigning a text-decoration style to your links goes back to the basics of your online branding and helps subscribers immediately identify the linked calls-to-action in your emails.

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