No Underlining of Text? Why?
by David Cherniack
on
Aug 28, 2007 at 2:51:31 pm
Can someone who is close to Adobe explain what their thinking was on this? (one has to assume they were thinking SOMETING, even if it was in the loony way that some design decisions are made over there)
Graphics elements are fine except they are not part of text animations, while, one would assume, underlined text would be.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Steve Roberts on Aug 28, 2007 at 3:15:18 pm
Nope, AE doesn't do it. Not sure about the others.
Adobe may have avoided it because underlining is bad form, from a typography perspective. It was necessary when typewriters couldn't do italics (they still can't, come to think of it) and it was apparently a signal to the typesetter to add italics to that text.
So Adobe might have felt it necessary to adhere to typographic conventions: underlining is bad.
I'm jus' sayin'.
And just because Word & Pages do it doesn't make it right. From a typography standpoint:-)
But if the client wants it, you'll probably have to make a stroke from a two-point mask.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 28, 2007 at 3:23:36 pm
>>So Adobe might have felt it necessary to adhere to typographic conventions: underlining is bad.
Though I'm sure they had some reason, I doubt this is it...though I could see them trying to explain away the problem with this as the reason :)
My guess?
1. May have had something to do with the difficulties posed by text animation.
2. (More likely) AE text has never had underlining. In the world of Adobe that's a good enough reason not to change things unless users clamour for it.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Prime Mover on Aug 29, 2007 at 12:41:54 am
The biggest reason is: there's no reason to.
AE already has tons of ways of drawing lines, stretching them, yatta yatta, either with masks, with "write on" effects, etc. The fact is, yes, underlining is very bad form, but there are ways of using it well in animation, but those ways are typically going to need to be separate from the text itself, in order to work fully. Things like horizontal lines that jut across the screen and under text (I do that quite frequently in spots). You can't do that with simple underlines, so why even bother with them?
You'll notice that there's a lot of simple things that you can't do in AE because AE is designed to be a more robust, involved program to do more complex operation. You can do ANYTHING in AE, but simpler stuff tends to be more complex then it would be in a simpler program. You can make and manipulate underlines just as well, you just have to do it yourself.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 28, 2007 at 4:04:34 pm
>>I think you're right: how do you animate underlined text? None of the other three have to deal with that messy little detail.
Actually I don't think it's that difficult. I lean towards reason #2. Inertia. You see a lot of old 'mistakes' in Adobe products that they don't bother to fix unless enough people scream at them.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Ron Lindeboom on Aug 28, 2007 at 4:39:46 pm
A mistake? Hardly.
IN STUDIES THAT I HAVE READ OVER THE YEARS, BLOCKS OF ALL CAPS TYPE, AS WELL AS BLOCKS OF UNDERLINED TEXT, ARE HARDER ON THE EYE, SLOWER TO READ AND MAKE FOR A VISUAL MESS ONSCREEN. ANYONE WHO HAS EVER STUDIED TYPOGRAPHY WOULDN'T USE THEM AND IN THE WORLD OF TYPOGRAPHY, THEY ARE SEEN AKIN TO THE WAY THAT PEOPLE WHO JUST GET AN EDITING TOOL WILL USE A BUNCH OF TRANSITIONS, UNTIL, THEY TOO, LEARN THAT TRANSITIONS ARE ALSO BOZO NO-NOS.
Thanks for participating in my object lesson to illustrate the point...
Shane Ross, by the way, has a great blog entry at the COWBlogs on the subject of transitions and their overuse. It is at:
In it, he explains the principle of "Just because you can, should you?" When it comes to both glaring transitions and underlined type, most pros would agree that the answer is an emphatic, "No!"
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Ron Lindeboom on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:56:01 pm
[David Cherniack]"1. Underlining judiciously has its place, especially in headings."
Yes, it does. But AE is an animation program and as such, I would opt to think that you can animate an underline (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and even use other techniques to accomplish the same thing. Newspapers, magazines, etc., have far more restrictions than does AE.
[David Cherniack]"2. The other major Adobe apps do it."
The other apps are not animation apps. Well, now that Photoshop has the Extended version, you could do it there, couldn't you???
[David Cherniack]"3. The discussion is about why it's not in AE. Not why it should or shouldn't be done."
Gee, I didn't know that you owned the site, David. And I was unaware that throwing ideas into the discussion was verboten. I just checked the policies and code of conduct page and didn't see any such thing...
Also, held to such a ludicrous limitation, this thread would be merely useless supposition and speculation. There would be absolutely NOTHING of substance in it.
[David Cherniack]"4. Why, pray, bring caps into the discussion."
It's called "illustrating a point," and it is something that people do to support ideas.
Lastly, these boards are for FAR MORE than just answering your question(s), David. There are many less experienced users here, as well as many very experienced users.
The boards are here to broaden people's perspectives and understanding of things.
If you want to hold it to a "you can only answer my question or I'll fold my arms across my chest and hold my breath" formula, feel free.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 28, 2007 at 6:08:53 pm
[Ron Lindeboom]"these boards are for FAR MORE than just answering your question(s), David. There are many less experienced users here, as well as many very experienced users.
The boards are here to broaden people's perspectives and understanding of things.
If you want to hold it to a "you can only answer my question or I'll fold my arms across my chest and hold my breath" formula, feel free."
Ron,
None of that was my intent. Sorry if it came off that way. The questions were posed in the friendly spirit of debate.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Prime Mover on Aug 29, 2007 at 12:57:10 am
1. Underlining judiciously has its place, especially in headings.
No to #1. Headings should NEVER be underlined. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. A good looking document will always resort to using other techniques like using a different font, or larger point size with bold.
- If you want to give the document character, use a fantasy or less traditional font for headings
- If the document is in a serif font (Times New Roman, Garamond, etc.) a great practice is to use a large san-serif font for headings. San-serif fonts are slower to read in big blocks of text, but tend to call attention to themselves more, which is better for headings.
- If it's a in-house business document, just use a larger typeface, or bold, or both.
- Use you're page layout to separate the headers from the body of the text. Indent, or justfy right, if it's appropriate for your design.
- Use graphical elements from your layout. Horizontal Rules (very different from underlines), or half rules, can separate headers from body text and can be worked into the overall format.
Underlines are an almost absolute no-no. The ONLY time you would ever underline things is if you want to point out specific points in the body, and it's a completely informal document (ie: internal business memo).
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 29, 2007 at 1:03:48 am
What's your feeling about the headings in an informal two column table? - on screen of course. I did try the options you suggest, but in the end I felt that underling the headings worked best. Call me crazy.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Dave LaRonde on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:08:24 pm
[David Cherniack]"Actually I don't think it's that difficult. "
Yeah, well, you might be right, but I think it would be a pain in the neck to use, especially with some of AE's text animation presets... okay, maybe not a pain in the neck, but a pain to the eye.
Perhaps the real pain would come when animating the tracking so the spacing between the letters of an underlined word widens. How would you deal with that?
Besides, If I'm going to underline something, I'm going to animate the underline to REALLY call attention to it.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:14:27 pm
>>Besides, If I'm going to underline something, I'm going to animate the underline to REALLY call attention to it.<<
Well now you've hit upon the salient point. I have to learn to animate shapes in the same or complimentary way the text is animating. Maybe I'll just use italics and a larger typeface. Sheesh.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Dave LaRonde on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:25:33 pm
[David Cherniack]"Maybe I'll just use italics and a larger typeface. Sheesh."
Aw, don't get upset, this thread is a welcome change from the usual "how to" threads explaining how to make light sabers to high schoolers. It's refershing to talk aesthetics now and again.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Todd Kopriva on Aug 28, 2007 at 4:59:03 pm
This decision to not provide underlining as a built-in character formatting option was made for two reasons:
1) Animating individual characters that are underlined doesn't really work---at least not the way most people would want it to work.
2) Underlining text is usually not used when alternative like italic formatting are available. (In other words, underlined text is generally considered ugly typography.)
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by David Cherniack on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:07:19 pm
>>1) Animating individual characters that are underlined doesn't really work---at least not the way most people would want it to work.
2) Underlining text is usually not used when alternative like italic formatting are available. (In other words, underlined text is generally considered ugly typography.)<<
Thanks Todd, for responding. I can accept reason 1. but as for reason 2:
Sometimes you want 'ugly' to make a stylistic point.
Why do the other Adobe apps allow it? Should After Effects alone stand as a bastion for typographical correctness? Perhaps you guys should get an internal Inquisition going at Adobe and bring the heretics into line :)
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by mmhmichael on Aug 28, 2007 at 5:31:25 pm
if you want to play around with making animated shapes using the text animators - try making a block of text that is just the | symbol (shift+back-slash key) in a big thick font. kern them extremely close together and you get a nice banner shape. i've animated this along a wavey path to get some nice 'flying banner' type effects. and rolling the scale animator up and down the range of text gives you nice effects as well.
Re: No Underlining of Text? Why? by Rob Webster on Aug 29, 2007 at 3:04:36 am
Two times when one may want to underline: 1) Making a citation of a book's title, according to MLA standards guides, and 2) If needing to make a graphical representation of a web page with hyperlinks underlined. While some web pages don't do this and many people disable this in their browsers, to much of the general populace, underlined text means "hyperlink".
There may be other examples, too, but those come immediately to mind. I'm not saying it should or shouldn't be offered in AE; I'm just noting two situations where a bigger font or italics might not be a better option.
