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When is Underlining Acceptable?
by Sandy Cusak, staff writer —
L
ooking back at the days of typewriters, underlining was pretty common. Today, aside from the occasional handwritten note and webpage link, underlining is pretty scarce. The reason is that it doesn't belong in professional publishing. There's something better.

Why not?
Underlining, on the typewriter, was done because there was no other way to emphasize words or indicate titles of publications. Today, because we use computers and have access to different type styles, there's no need to underline text. We put words in italics. Underlining looks clunky and actually undermines the legibility of a document by obscuring the descenders of lower-case letters (like the letters g, j, p, q, and y).

The exception
The Web generally uses underlining for indicating a hyperlink. People have come to expect links to be underlined so, this is the only case where I would recommend underlining. Actually, I think that all links should be underlined so webpage readers can easily scan and find links to other pages. Unfortunately, some sites don't underline links, or worse yet, underline type that isn't a link. This often makes for very frustrating and confusing browsing.

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