Appearance → Customize → Design → General → Links → Content link style.
This governs links inside post and page copy — a paragraph, a list item, a table cell, a caption. Not the menu, not the footer, not a post title, not a widget.
The seven styles
| Style | At rest | On hover |
|---|---|---|
| Text color, underlined (default) | Text colour, thin underline | Underline thickens |
| Link color, underlined | Link colour, thin underline | Underline thickens |
| Text color, link-color underline | Text colour, 2px underline in your link colour | Underline turns the text colour and thickens |
| Text color, no underline | Nothing but the text | An underline appears |
| Link color, no underline | Link colour only | An underline appears |
| Link color, accent fill on hover | Link colour | The word fills with the accent colour |
| Text color, highlighter marker | A stripe along the baseline | The stripe grows to cover the word |
The styles that name a colour use your Link color; the fill uses the Accent color; the highlighter uses the Selection background colour. Change those and every style follows.
Choosing
Text color, underlined — the default — is the quietest and the best for a long reading column. The link is the text, and only the rule underneath says otherwise.
Text color, link-color underline is the print treatment: black text, coloured rule. It reads beautifully in a body of copy and is the one to try if you find the default too plain and coloured links too loud.
Link color, underlined is the obvious “make my links look like links”. Never wrong.
Text color, highlighter marker is the most distinctive and the most opinionated. It suits a personal blog with a light touch; it gets tiring in a 1,500-word technical post.
The two no-underline styles are the ones to think about. A link with no underline and no colour difference is invisible until the pointer reaches it, which is a problem for anyone reading rather than hunting.
Every style changes on hover
That is a rule, not a coincidence. It is the only feedback a pointer gets, and for the un-underlined styles it is also the WCAG answer to “colour must not be the only cue”.
Images are left alone
A link that wraps nothing but a picture takes none of this. Without that guard, the highlighter stripe and the accent fill would paint a block behind your images.
What this does not cover
- The menu and the footer menu
- Post titles in a listing
- Widget links
- Buttons, including the header button
Those are navigation and chrome; a highlighter stripe across a menu would be a lot.