In a printed document, don’t underline. Ever.
Underlining is another holdover from the typewriter age. Because typewriters had no bold or italic styles, the only way to emphasize text was to back up and type underscores beneath the text. It was a workaround made necessary by shortcomings in the technology.
Our computers do not suffer from those shortcomings, so when you feel the urge to underline something, use bold or italic instead. (Italicized bold is best avoided.)
“But the Bluebook* requires underlining!” No, it doesn’t. The samples inside the back cover of the Bluebook do, unfortunately, use underlining for emphasis. But Bluebook Rule P.1 is clear that underlining is merely a substitute for italicizing: “Generally, only two typefaces are used in court documents and legal memoranda—ordinary type, such as courier, and italics (indicated in some materials by underscoring)” (emphasis added).
Subsequent Bluebook rules tell you to “underscore or italicize”. So unless you’re using Courier—and of course, you’re not—you fulfill your Bluebook destiny by italicizing, not underlining.
On a website, it’s acceptable to underline. By web convention, underlining signifies that a piece of text is a clickable hyperlink. Conversely, don’t underline text that isn’t a hyperlink—it will confuse your visitors, whose desperate clicking will go unanswered.
* Confidential to nonlawyers: not the one with the car prices. The legal Bluebook is “a uniform system of citation”, according to its own description (though some lawyers might dispute the “uniform” part).
It might be nice to have a sidebar or digression on the distinction between italic type–a distinct face chosen to be in harmony with the body face–and slanted type.
See the entry on bold and italic styles.
There is one usage for underlining text — that is when quoting legislation that has been marked up. In New Jersey, text that has been deleted from proposed legislation is surrounded by left and right brackets. Text that has been added is underlined.
It would be inappropriate to deviate from that if you are demonstrating amendments to legislation.
One situation where underlining is preferable to italicizing is for 1Ls in their legal writing classes. Legal writing teachers want to see if their students are getting the detail-work correct. It’s nearly impossible to tell if a student has italicized the period in “Id.” (as the Bluebook requires), but not difficult to tell if it’s underlined. Thus, you might consider adding an exception to your “never underline” rule for situations involving legal writing courses.
The legal writing teachers of our nation do important work and are obviously entitled to set whatever rules they like.
But personally, I’m reluctant to endorse a policy that will make your grading slightly easier in the short run but inculcate a habit that your students will just have to unlearn in the long run. Italicizing is preferred by a wide margin of practitioners. It seems like legal writing, as one of the most practical law school courses, ought to follow suit.
Respectfully, MB, I practiced law for a number of years and found no preference, one way or the other for underlining vs. italics. In fact, I believe (although I must admit that I am not positive of it) that my jurisdiction’s loosely enforced local rules called for underlining.
Well, the mere fact that a method was once a workaround does not necessarily mean it shoud be forgotten once new methods come up.
I mean, three methods of emphasising are better than just one or two, so I do not see any practical point in total refusal from underlined text.
Underining isn’t just obsolete; it’s ugly and makes text hard to read.
While acceptable on the web, many websites (including this one) minimize the use of underlining to indicate links.
As for printed use, show me a professionally-designed book, magazine or newspaper that uses underlining to emphasize text. You won’t find one.
“Ugly” shows personal preferences.
Remember your university years - how would you scheme a textbook? You would probably underline the most important passages. For me, from University, underlining is the most natural way of emphasis, maybe not typographologically, but psychologically. And psychological ease of perception leads to ease of reading.
For me, italicized text is much more difficult (i) to read, and (ii) to notice it is emphasized.
In contracts, I always use underlining as a second mean of emphasis after bold text. Underlined subheading to a lengthy paragraph substantially eases general readability of a document. And I know many American (and English) law firms that stick to such a style in their contracts (I myself am practicing in Russia as a Russian qualified lawyer).
By the way, in a word document you also can create links between its parts and such links might well be underlined similart to hyperlinks. However, as a general rule, Internet hyperlinks are not only underlined, but also marked by blue or another color - exactly to distinguish them from any other underlined text, so I do not think underlined text might cause any confusion with hyperlinks.