Why Underlining No Longer Belongs in Modern Book Design

For decades, underlining served a clear purpose: it helped writers emphasize text in an era when typewriters couldn’t produce italics. It was a workaround—useful, practical, and completely tied to the limitations of old technology.

But today’s publishing tools aren’t limited the way typewriters were. Modern word processors, professional typesetting software, and print‑on‑demand retailers all support clean, elegant formatting options. That means underlining has officially become an outdated design choice, especially in books.

Underlining Creates Visual Clutter

Underlined text interrupts the natural flow of reading. The line cuts through descenders (letters like g, j, p, q, y), making the text harder to read and visually messy. In a printed book—where clarity and aesthetics matter—this is a real drawback.

Italics Do the Job Better

Italics are the modern, professional standard for emphasis. They’re cleaner, easier on the eyes, and fully supported by every major print‑on‑demand platform, including:

• Amazon KDP

• Ingram Spark

• Lulu

• Barnes & Noble Press

These retailers expect manuscripts to follow contemporary formatting conventions, and italics are the accepted method for emphasis in both fiction and nonfiction.

Underlining Signals “Old‑Fashioned” Design

Readers may not consciously think about typography, but they feel it. Underlined text can make a book look dated, amateurish, or like it was converted from a typewriter manuscript. In a competitive publishing world, presentation matters.

If your goal is a polished, professional book—especially one competing on Amazon—clean typography is part of your brand.

Accessibility Matters

Underlining is also commonly used for hyperlinks in digital formats. When readers see underlined text in a printed book, it can create confusion or imply a link that doesn’t exist.

Italics avoid that problem entirely.

Print-on-Demand Retailers Don’t Require Underlining—Ever

There is no modern POD platform that requires underlining for emphasis, headings, or any other purpose. In fact, many style guides actively discourage it.

Chicago Manual of Style, AP, and most professional publishing standards all recommend italics instead.

So, What Should Authors Use Instead?

Here’s the modern hierarchy of emphasis:

Italics — for emphasis, titles, foreign words, and subtle highlighting

Bold — sparingly, for instructional or business books

Small caps — for stylistic headings or design‑driven nonfiction

Underlining simply doesn’t have a place in that list anymore.

The Bottom Line

Underlining is a relic of the typewriter era. Today’s authors have better tools, better typography, and better standards available to them. If you want your book to look clean, modern, and professionally designed, skip the underlining and embrace italics and other contemporary formatting options.

Your readers—and your print‑on‑demand retailer—will thank you.