Underline
Encyclopedia
Underscore
The underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...
, is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of writing
Writing
Writing is the representation of language in a textual medium through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and non-symbolic preservation of language via non-textual media, such as magnetic tape audio.Writing most likely...
. Single, and occasionally double ("double-underscore"), underlining was originally used in hand-written or typewritten
Typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
document
Document
The term document has multiple meanings in ordinary language and in scholarship. WordNet 3.1. lists four meanings :* document, written document, papers...
s to emphasise text. In a manuscript
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
to be typeset, various forms of underlining were conventionally used to indicate that text should be set in a special typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
such as italics
Italic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
to show emphasis
Emphasis (typography)
In typography, emphasis is the exaggeration of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text—to emphasize them.- Methods and use :...
, part of a procedure known as markup. With the advent of word processing
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
, different typefaces can be used in the manuscript directly, so that underlining is no longer needed for markup; but underlining is sometimes used in documents in its own right.
Underlines are sometimes used as a diacritic
Diacritic
A diacritic is a glyph added to a letter, or basic glyph. The term derives from the Greek διακριτικός . Diacritic is both an adjective and a noun, whereas diacritical is only an adjective. Some diacritical marks, such as the acute and grave are often called accents...
, to indicate that a letter has a different pronunciation to its non-underlined form.
Use with computers
In web browserWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s, default settings typically distinguish hyperlink
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
s by underlining them (and usually changing their color), but both users and websites can change these settings to make some or all hyperlinks appear differently (or even without distinction from normal text).
HTML and CSS
The HTML special inline elementCSS
-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
style
{text-decoration: underline}. These elements may also exist in other markup languageMarkup language
A markup language is a modern system for annotating a text in a way that is syntactically distinguishable from that text. The idea and terminology evolved from the "marking up" of manuscripts, i.e. the revision instructions by editors, traditionally written with a blue pencil on authors' manuscripts...
s, such as MediaWiki
MediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
; the Text Encoding Initiative
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities. The community runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and maintains a technical standard, a wiki and a toolset....
(TEI) provides an extensive selection of related elements for marking editorial activity (insertion, deletion, correction, addition, etc.).
On Wikis
To underline text on a MediawikiMediaWiki
MediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
-server (e.g. Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
) page, CSS
CSS
-Computing:*Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the style of document presentations in web development*Central Structure Store in the PHIGS 3D API*Closed source software, software that is not distributed with source code...
can be used, and it is also possible to simply enclose with its HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
-tags:
Unicode
UnicodeUnicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
has the combining diacritic "combining low line" at U+0332 that results in an underline when run together: . Not to be confused is the combining macron below
Combining macron below
Macron below, , is a combining diacritical mark used in various orthographies.It is not to be confused are "combining minus below" [[̠|]] , "combining low line" and "low line" _ ). The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter will result in an unbroken underline when...
.
"Simulated" underlines in plaintext
In plain-text (ASCIIASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
) computer files, including plain-text e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
s, where underlining is not possible, it is often indicated by surrounding words with underscore
Underscore
The underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...
characters. For example, "You must use an _emulsion_ paint on the ceiling".
Underline (typically red or wavy or both) is often used by spell checker
Spell checker
In computing, a spell checker is an application program that flags words in a document that may not be spelled correctly. Spell checkers may be stand-alone capable of operating on a block of text, or as part of a larger application, such as a word processor, email client, electronic dictionary,...
s (and grammar checker
Grammar checker
A grammar checker in computing terms, is a program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a word processor, but are also available as stand-alone application that...
s) to denote misspelled or otherwise incorrect text.
Underlines in non-Latin scripts
In ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, the underline is a punctuation mark for proper names (專名號, 专名号; pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: zhuānmínghào; literally “proper name mark
Proper name mark
In Chinese writing, a proper name mark is an underline used to mark proper names, such as the names of people, places, dynasties, organizations...
”, used for personal and geographic names). Its meaning is somewhat akin to capitalization in English and should never be used for emphasis; however, due to the influence of English computing, the underline is now sometimes used for emphasis. A wavy underline (書名號, 书名号; pinyin
Pinyin
Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...
: shūmínghào; literally “book title mark”) serves a similar function, but marks names of literary works instead of proper names.
In the case of two or more adjacent proper names, each individual proper name is separately underlined, so there should be a slight gap between the underlining of each proper name.
Manuscripts
The following kinds of underlines are used on manuscriptManuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s to indicate special typeface
Typeface
In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....
s to be used.
- single underline for italic typeItalic typeIn typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
- double underline for small capsSmall capsIn typography, small capitals are uppercase characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase letters or text figures...
- triple underline for full capital letters (used among small caps or to change text already typed as lower case)
- wavy underline for boldface
See also
- UnderscoreUnderscoreThe underscore [ _ ] is a character that originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to underline words...
(the _ character and similar, and other meanings) - OverlineOverlineAn overline or overbar or overscore , refers to the typographical feature of a line drawn immediately above the text, for example used to indicate medieval sigla. Specifically, a line drawn over one symbol is a macron, and a line over a collection of symbols is a vinculum...
- StrikethroughStrikethroughStrikethrough is a typographical presentation of words with a horizontal line through their center. This is an example....