Underlines on your Website
Tips and FAQ for a Home Business

I was working with a businesswoman who was having difficulties with her website. People were not able to use it well and were writing in with complaints. I went to take a look at the website, and it was immediately apparent why so many people were having problems. She was underlining everything - and the things that were underlined were not clickable!

On the internet, the use of an underline means one thing. It means you can click those words. Every style guide you will read for working on the internet reiterates this. You do NOT underline titles of books, for example. You use quotes or italics. Why? Because people on the web have been trained from the web's infancy that an underline is a clickable link. If you start underlining things that are NOT able to be clicked, people think your site is broken. They try to click on the word, it doesn't do anything, and they get frustrated.

Never use underlines. The only time you should ever underline something is if the user can click on that word.

Related to this, always make the clickable word or phrase MEANINGFUL. Do not have the thing that people click on be "click me"!! The underline draws attention - and the words are meaningless. You always want the clickable link to have meaning. You would say

Visit my Working From Home Pages

You should never say

Click Me!

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Working from Home