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underline

 
Dictionary: un·der·line   (ŭn'dər-līn', ŭn'dər-līn') pronunciation
 
tr.v., -lined, -lin·ing, -lines.
  1. To draw a line under; emphasize or cause to stand out; underscore.
  2. To emphasize; stress.
n. (ŭn'dər-līn')

A line under something, such as a symbol, word, or phrase, used to indicate emphasis or italic type.


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Thesaurus: underline
Top

verb

    To accord emphasis to: accent, accentuate, emphasize, feature, highlight, italicize, play up, point up, stress, underscore. See important/unimportant.

 
Veterinary Dictionary: underline
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An animal's ventral profile; the shape of the belly when viewed from the side, e.g. pendulous, pot-belly, tucked up, gaunt.

 
Wikipedia: Underline
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Underlined text.

An underline, also called an underscore[1], is one or more horizontal lines immediately below a portion of writing. Single, and occasionally double ("double-underscore"), underlining was originally used in hand-written or typewritten documents to emphasise text. In a manuscript to be typeset, various forms of underlining were conventionally used to indicate that text should be set in a special typeface such as italics to show emphasis, part of a procedure known as markup. With the advent of word processing, different typefaces can be used in the manuscript directly, so that underlining is no longer needed for markup; but underlining is sometimes used in documents in its own right.

Underlines are sometimes used as a diacritic, to indicate that a letter has a different pronunciation to its non-underlined form.

Contents

Use with computers

In web browsers, default settings typically distinguish hyperlinks by underlining them (and usually changing their color), but both users and websites can change these settings to make some or all hyperlinks appear differently (or even without distinction from normal text).

The HTML special inline element <ins>, denoting inserted text, is often presented as underlined text. HTML also has a presentational element <u>, denoting underlined text; this is deprecated in favour of the CSS style {text-decoration: underline}. These elements may also exist in other markup languages, such as MediaWiki.

In plain-text (ASCII) computer files, including e-mail communication, where underlining is not possible, it is often indicated by surrounding words with underscore characters. For example, "You must use an _emulsion_ paint on the ceiling".

Unicode has the combining diacritic "combining low line" at U+0332  ̲ that results in an underline when run together: u̲n̲d̲e̲r̲l̲i̲n̲e̲. Not to be confused is the combining macron below.

Underline (typically red or wavy or both) is often used by spell checkers (and grammar checkers) to denote misspelled or otherwise incorrect text.

Underlines in non-Latin scripts

In Chinese, the underline is a punctuation mark for proper names (專名號, 专名号; pinyin: zhuānmínghào; literally “proper name mark”, used for personal and geographic names). Its meaning is somewhat akin to capitalization in English and should never be used for emphasis; however, due to the influence of English computing, the underline is now sometimes used for emphasis. A wavy underline (書名號, 书名号; pinyin: shūmínghào; literally “book title mark”) serves a similar function, but marks names of literary works instead of proper names.

In the case of two or more adjacent proper names, each individual proper name is separately underlined, so there should be a slight gap between the underlining of each proper name.

Manuscripts

The following kinds of underlines are used on manuscripts to indicate special typefaces to be used.

Notes

See also

Look up underline in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

 
Translations: Underline
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Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - understrege, fremhæve
n. - understregning, billedtekst

Nederlands (Dutch)
onderstrepen, benadrukken, onderstreping, onderschrift

Français (French)
v. tr. - (lit, fig) souligner
n. - soulignement

Deutsch (German)
n. - Unterstreichung
v. - unterstreichen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - υπογράμμιση
v. - υπογραμμίζω, (μτφ.) προσδίδω έμφαση, τονίζω

Italiano (Italian)
sottolineatura

Português (Portuguese)
n. - grifo (m)
v. - sublinhar

Русский (Russian)
подчеркивать слова, придавать особое значение, линия под словом, надпись под картиной

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - subrayar, destacar, recalcar
n. - subrayado, raya (debajo de una palabra, etc.)

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - streck under, understrykning
v. - stryka under, understryka

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
在...下面划线, 加下划线, 作...的衬里, 下划线

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 在...下面劃線, 加下劃線, 作...的襯裡
n. - 下劃線

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 밑줄을 치다, 강조하다
n. - 밑줄 , 다음 공연의 예고

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 下に線を引く, 強調する
n. - 下線, アンダーライン, 次の興行の予告

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) خط تحتي (فعل) وضع خطا تحت, ابرز‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮מתח קו תחת-, הדגיש, הבליט‬
n. - ‮קו תחתי‬


 
 
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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Thesaurus. Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary Copyright © 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Underline" Read more
Translations. Copyright © 2007, WizCom Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved.  Read more