Underlining. What? Why? Stop it!
I haven’t posted for a while so wanted to find a topic that I’m passionate about.?I love tackling the big problems, the difficult subjects and the elephant in the room.?I really wanted to write about something that connects with people. #SeriousPostFolks.
Handwritten & Typewriters Only.
Why do people insist on continuing to underline titles, text, whole sentences and even entire paragraphs??Underlining is ugly and makes the text harder to read (oh, and its not 1975).
I can just about accept its use in two scenarios; in your handwritten notepad or on your 30 year old typewriter.?But, that’s it.?Stop it!
Trying to achieve bold in your notepad is tricky - requiring either a separate (thicker) pen or retracing each word over-n-over again.?No chance!
Underlining is a product of a mechanical age when typewriters were restricted to just the characters on the physical hammers impacting the page. Emphasising required backing up the carriage and adding underscores underneath existing text.?Painful.
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Bold. Italics. Markdown.
Newsflash! The world has moved on.?Bold and italics are a stable of our modern digital life.?Wow, we even have the option of using colours (although not on LinkedIn posts it would appear).
Then, if you really are a freethinker and thought-leader looking to stand out from the crowd, we even have markdown which gives us block quotes (this example), code blocks and other such glorious techniques.
Perhaps, just maybe, there is still a place for underlining hyperlinks to help them stand out from other emphasised elements (although even then, I’m not really convinced).?Maybe a different colour with an underline onHover is a worthy compromise (as preferred by LinkedIn itself)?!?
But, most importantly, whatever your chosen emphasising strategy… don’t over emphasise.?It loses its impact!
PS.?I don’t like italics either.?But, used sparingly, I can just about live with it!