The eyesore of text-decoration: underline
Following Jon Tan‘s excellent talk at Brighton’s Skillswap, I picked up and re-read my copy of fantastic 1980′s book – “The Mac is Not a Typewriter” by Robin Williams (no, not that Robin Williams).
What a lovely little tome, quite simple in its premise:
- It asks its readers to abandon their typewriting habits
- It reveals the full typographic capabilities of your average Macintosh
- It offers a solid primer in basic rules of typography
Among its many useful tips, the book points out that professionally set type is very rarely underlined – italics and bolds are much more highly favoured for emphasis. In the rare cases where underline is used, it is generally lowered gracefully below the glyphs.
When it comes to underlining links, our browsers are very much like typewriters. They wedge the underline right up to the font’s baseline, slicing off decenders. How old fashioned! Yet this oldest of web design patterns – underlined links – still has its place.
Anyway, bottom line is: traditionally underlined text is hideous. Let’s use bottom borders! They look fabulous – especially on Jon’s site. Just remember to take the box model into account when setting line heights and margin.