A highlighter marker effect — a solid color band behind part of a text, like a real highlighter pen used on a printed page — draws attention to a key phrase in a more organic, casual way than a background color box or bold text.
Customize the highlight color and thickness (how much of the text height the color band covers, mimicking a marker's overlap), see the effect rendered live, then copy the CSS needed to apply the same highlighter style to text on your own page.
The technique uses a linear-gradient background positioned to only cover part of the text's height, creating the characteristic marker-pen look rather than a full solid background block behind the entire text.
Because everything runs locally in your browser, results appear instantly and nothing you type or upload is ever sent to a server.
Bookmark this page if you expect to use this tool regularly — it loads fast and behaves the same way every time, with no account needed.
This kind of task shows up constantly in everyday writing, coding, design, and admin work, which is exactly why a dedicated, focused tool saves so much back-and-forth.
A tool that does one job well, without a cluttered interface or unrelated features competing for attention, tends to be faster to use than a heavier all-in-one app.
If you find yourself needing this often, keeping this page open in a tab is usually faster than digging through a bigger software suite's menus.
Frequently asked questions
How is this different from just setting a background-color on the text?
A plain background-color fills the text's entire line height uniformly; this technique uses a positioned gradient to create a more natural, marker-pen-like partial coverage that doesn't perfectly align with the text edges.
Does this work well with multi-line highlighted text?
This effect is designed primarily for a single line or short inline phrase; multi-line highlighted spans may need additional adjustment for the gradient positioning to look natural across line breaks.