Notably though, the majority of these sites have kept slight variances on the traditional lurid blue color ( #0000EE) that’s been the browser default since the beginning of the web.

When they removed underlines from their search results page in 2014, Google lead designer Jon Wiley argued that it created a cleaner look. However, plenty of popular websites have ditched underlines: The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Amazon, Apple, GitHub, Twitter, Wikipedia. The meaning is crystal clear - an underline means a link. It’s a universally understood convention. Hyperlinks are the defining feature of the internet and from the internet’s inception, they have been underlined. That look is mostly associated with supermarket tabloids.īut the web is different.

Not convinced? I invite you to find a book, newspaper, or magazine that underlines text. In special situations, like headings, you can also consider using all caps, small caps, or changing the point size. If you feel the urge to underline, use bold or italic instead. That’s clear in this advice from Butterick’s “Practical Typography”: There are nicer ways to draw emphasis, to establish hierarchy, and to demarcate titles.

In graphic design, underlines are generally seen as unsophisticated. Before we come to how to style underlines, we should answer the question: should we underline?

Microsoft edge visited link color