Is emphasizing a point by underlining still appropriate?
Instinctively I find underlining for emphasis distracting and much prefer bold or italic. From my research it seems underlining is a carryover from typewriters that were incapable of italicizing or bolding.
I'm currently in a situation creating written content with others who love underlining as a point of emphasis and see nothing wrong with it. They sometimes include italic and bold in the same paragraph.
Should I try and break the teams underlining-for-emphasis habits or change my perspective on it's appropriateness?
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I think underlining for emphasizing is a little bit old-fashioned. But if you write for an audience which is used to it, why not?
If you want to publish your writing online, I would advice against underlining. On the internet underlined text is associated with a link. If you do not really have a good reason to break this convention (and emphasizing isn't one, if you ask me), then do not do it.
Mixing different styles (bold, italic, underlining) is confusing at best for the reader. Is the italic section less important than the bold? Does underlining strengthen more than bold? Is the not emphasized text necessary at all?
The last sentence isn't a joke. I've seen whole paragraphs underlined in some writings, wondering why they have written the non-underlined at all. If they had skipped these, they could have skipped the underlining also.
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No, no, no, hell no, frak no, can I get a no from the peanut gallery? oh, and NO.
We are not typing on typewriters any more. We are using computers. Word processors, HTML, CSS. Underlining means a hyperlink. Period. If you want to emphasize something, use bold, italics, indents, all caps, or any combination thereof.
The only exception is certain legalese, if the lawyers insist on underlining for some archaic reason which gives formatting weight in court. Still annoying, but there's no arguing with Legal.
If you are not dealing with lawyers, then change the underlines to italics as a matter of course. If the writers object, tell them, "But in typesetting, when something is underlined in the manuscript, that's what it means. It's telling the typesetter 'italicize this.'" Brook no arguments.
(Sorry. I am a writer, editor, and typesetter, and seeing underlined non-hyperlinked copy makes my blood pressure rise.)
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