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Avoid underlined text Usability Guideline

Description

Avoid underlined text - people will click on it and think it’s a broken link.

Help

Use something other than underlining for highlighting text, because it looks like a link, and users become frustrated when the “link” does not work.

Applicable standards

Note: The guidelines.usability.gov website has been down since July 2020, although www.usability.gov is still operating and the PDF version of the guidelines is still available.

Change history

  • 6.48 Mar 2023 Fixed false positive on abbr.
  • 6.46 Sep 2022 Fixed false positive on bootstrap.
  • 5.28 Dec 2017 Fixed false negative.
  • 5.22 Jul 2016 Fixed false positive on print media.
  • 3.1 Feb 2009 Don’t fire on single character underlines used to indicate shortcuts.
  • 1.0 Feb 2007 Added.

This page describes a web site issue detected in HTML documents by SortSite Desktop and OnDemand Suite.

Rule ID: UseGov10.4