: When did books start using underlines? Various sources (such as Wikipedia) say that underlining words is a practice originally from handwritten documents, intended to show the printer that the

@Vandalay110

In Western printing, underlining is at least as old as printing. There was a general process called rubricing which is the process of marking and annotating (originally by hand) of a printed manuscript to finish it and/or give more legitimacy to the printed item. Usually this was just red lettering, but very often included the use of underlining. Later it was common to forgo hand-rubricing in favor of a separate printing pass with red ink.

Try an image search for "rubricate underlining" and you will see examples.

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@Sent7350415

I think that the use of a typewriter increased the usage of underlining (you can't simply change the font of a typewriter). So it was easier to go back and underline the word or the complete heading.



In a well printed book or thesis you will never see an underlined word or words. If you have the possibility to use italic font (or a typewriter font for urls) you should do it.


If you are a typographer, and you know exactly what you are doing, you can use it.
If you are not a typographer, use justified text with hyphenation and use italic font for marking or use a color.


Writing your thesis (your given example shows one): do not use underlining (that shows you know nothing about good typography). Use italic font. Please have a look in a book on typography like Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style.

Have for example an look to Spache research, 1965. I think it is written with an typewriter. That causes the underlining. The (blue) underlining in the TOC remarks that the headings in TOC are links to the chapters or sections.

An interesting book for this is The technology of text; with a few underlinings, remarking that students when working with books used to underline important things in it. That would be a reason for me not to use underlining in a book or paper.

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