JSFiddle - React, Tailwind, and code Playground

HTML

<script src="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Libre+Baskerville"></script>
<span style="display:block;background-color:white;">On Github <a href="http://github.com/arbelh/HalfStyle">http://github.com/arbelh/HalfStyle</a></span>
<hr/>
<span class="textToHalfStyle">Dr. Jekyll and M. Hide</span>

CSS

/*!
 * HalfStyle
 * Copyright 2014 Arbel Hakopian
 * Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/arbelh/HalfStyle/blob/master/license.md)
 */
/* HalfStyle improvement by @KevinGranger on StackOverflow.com */
body{
    background-color: black;
}

.textToHalfStyle{
    display:block;
    margin: 200px 0 0 0;
    text-align:center;
}

.halfStyle {
    font-family: 'Libre Baskerville', serif;
    position:relative;
    display:inline-block;
    width:1;
    font-size:70px;
    color: black;
    overflow:hidden;
    white-space: pre;
    text-shadow: 1px 2px 0 white;
}
.halfStyle:before {
    display:block;
    z-index:1;
    position:absolute;
    top:0;
    width: 50%;
    content: attr(data-content); /* dynamic content for the pseudo element */
    overflow:hidden;
    pointer-events: none; /* so the base char is selectable by mouse */
    color: white;
}

JavaScript

/*!
 * HalfStyle
 * Copyright 2014 Arbel Hakopian
 * Licensed under MIT (https://github.com/arbelh/HalfStyle/blob/master/license.md)
 */
jQuery(function($) {
    var text, chars, $el, i, output;

    // Iterate over all class occurences
    $('.textToHalfStyle').each(function(idx, el) {
        $el = $(el);
        text = $el.text();
        chars = text.split('');

        // Set the screen-reader text
        $el.html('<span style="position: absolute !important;clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px);clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);">' + text + '</span>');

        // Reset output for appending
        output = '';

        // Iterate over all chars in the text
        for (i = 0; i < chars.length; i++) {
            // Create a styled element for each character and append to container
            output += '<span aria-hidden="true" class="halfStyle" data-content="' + chars[i] + '">' + chars[i] + '</span>';
        }

        // Write to DOM only once
        $el.append(output);
    });
});