I can’t find in the book or web sites for the correct html markup for underlining text; from my understanding, <u> and </u> is obsolete.
[font=calibri]There’s a bit of mythology around the <u> tag. Like <b> and <i>, it has not been officially deprecated, because there are times when you want text to be underlined and that is the most semantically appropriate tag to use. However, whereas <strong> typically gives bold text and <em> typically gives italic text, and these carry more semantic meaning than <b> and <i>, there is no real equivalent for <u>.
And why is that? Because it’s recommended that in general, you avoid underlining text on the web … because underlined text looks like a link. Go on, hands up, how many of you were thinking about clicking on that? The convention that underlined text signifies a link is completely hard-wired into surfers, so if you have underlined text that isn’t a link, it’s going to be confusing for them and will make it harder for them to tell what is clickable and what isn’t.
Sure, there will be times when underlining is what you need, such as when you are working to a particular legal or house style guide, or making a facsimile replica of a printed document, and in those cases it’s fine to use <u> if there’s no other handy semantic element to hang text-decoration:underline; on … but apart from that very small set of examples, you shouldn’t be underlining anything except links, and with links there’s no need to use <u>![/font]
http://www.html-5.com/changes/deprecated/style-tags.html
u (underlined text) was deprecated in HTML version 4 but added back in HTML 5 for special circumstances, such as to underline proper names in Chinese
To avoid confusion with hypertext links, one of the alternatives to the <u> tag should be used instead; if the underline is required, the style=“text-decoration: underline” CSS style should be used instead.
<head>
<style>
*{text-decoration:underline;}
</style>
use this style code to the text where you want underlining.
Wouldn’t that just replicate the same problem Stevie pointed out above, i.e underline for most people means a link?
Wouldn’t that just replicate the same problem Stevie pointed out above, i.e underline for most people means a link?
Yes. Basically it means you can underline text via the U tag or via CSS, but you must consider the general convention that underline text is a link. But sometimes un-underlined text is a link. for example HEADLINES. Through good graphic design, and patient users, you could , however make links visible using some sort of uniform color scheme and underline on hover ( to reinforce that the hovered text is a link).
be adviced you would be fighting against the usual and natural flow of user’s navigation instincts.