I’ve never come across anything that clever. I’ve only seen it done manually.

You can set a background coloured line around your text.

In this example there is a 2 pt paper coloured stroke added to the bottom text:

So the stroke is on top of the underline? Clever!

That is pretty clever. I need to make a mental note.

Sure. Get the underline through the character palate. One of the options is *offset*. Change that until you clear your descenders as much as you want.

The snippet below is down & dirty; looking at it, it needs a bit more weight (I used .33 points for the rule) and still a bit more offset, but it does clear the descenders.

Another workaround would be to make two character styles, one with underlines and one without. After your text is set, you can easily replace critical characters ( , „ ¿ g j p q y for example) with the find&change function (Menu/Edit/Find&Change). There you would only replace the character styles and the chosen characters will have a gap in their underlining.

(hope the second picture helps ;-)

I really like Mills solution the best. I often discourage underlines in place of the alternates in font weights, but his trick worth using because it adds to esthetic value.

“I really like Mills solution the best.”
I think that one is the most dangerous because the white outline is eventually going to obscure part of an adjacent glyph, isn’t it?

Cheers!

Out of curiosity, when is one going to be underlining text these days in print? I’ve always thought that on paper it was used if you were stuck with a typewriter and online if it was a link.

aluminum: Since underlines almost always mark links on screen it’s not a bad idea to underline links in print.

Thanks all.

Cheers for the suggestions.

GT

Don’t lapidate me, but I sometimes actually like to use underline: when writing letters (i.e. e-mails as well), underlining for emphasis gives it an additional “hand-written” note without having to resort to italics for body text, which is an overkill for readibility.

You know, they say, there is no bad type, only people who cannot use it. I think, this applies for most design elements, including underlining. (Though I’m not claiming to know how to use it, I’m pretty confident about using it in that context).

Szabolcs