Moving the Underline Position

Loriann underlines a fair amount of text in some of her documents. She wonders if there is a way to move the stroke of the underline down, vertically, so the underline doesn't touch the bottoms of any character descenders.

Word allows you to choose a style of underlining (single, double, dotted, wavy, etc.), but the position of the underline is hard coded into the program, as far as I can tell. You can, however, "trick" Word into changing the underline position. Try these steps:

1. Type the text you want to underline, but make sure there is a space just before the text. For instance, I might type " Allen Wyatt" with the leading space.
2. Select all of the text you just typed, including the leading space. Don't select anything after the text, including a paragraph mark that may be there.
3. Underline the text. Now the leading space and your text should all be underlined, like normal.
4. Select all of the text you just underlined, but don't include the leading space in the selection. In my example, I would choose just "Allen Wyatt" without the leading space.
5. Press Ctrl+D. Word displays the Font dialog box.
6. Make sure the Advanced tab of the dialog box is displayed. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Advanced tab of the Font dialog box.

7. Using the Position drop-down list, choose Raised.
8. In the By field, just to the right of the Position drop-down list, choose how much you want the text raised vertically. (Something like 5 or 6 points works well, but it really is going to depend on the size of the font you are using for your text. So, some trial and error may be needed with this setting.)
9. Click OK.

That's it; the underline should now completely clear the descenders on the text. This works because the underline is "keyed" to the leading space, which did not get raised. All you did was to raise the other text higher, away from the baseline. If you had selected the anchoring space in step 4, then this approach would not have worked.

What to do about the leading space, then? You can make it virtually disappear if you follow these steps:

1. Select the leading, underlined space.
2. Display the Home tab of the ribbon.
3. In the Font Size control, specify a size of 2 points.

Your leading space should now "disappear," though it is still really there. (You just can't see it because it is too small.)

Obviously, the acceptability of this approach will depend on how your text appears in your document. It works great if the text you are underlining is the only text in the paragraph. If, however, there is text before or after it, then it will look strange. (Like I said, it won't work for all uses.)

If you have a need to add underlines like this a lot, you might consider just adding a graphic line under your text. That way you could change not only the position of the line, but also its weight and other characteristics. It wouldn't be satisfactory to add the underline while you are still editing (adding and deleting) text, but it could be a final touch you add to your document.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (7457) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, and Word in Microsoft 365.