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No Underlining of Text? Why?
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Nice creative solution. I’ll figure something out that works in the scene.
David
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[David Cherniack] “1. Underlining judiciously has its place, especially in headings.”
Yes, it does. But AE is an animation program and as such, I would opt to think that you can animate an underline (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread) and even use other techniques to accomplish the same thing. Newspapers, magazines, etc., have far more restrictions than does AE.
[David Cherniack] “2. The other major Adobe apps do it.”
The other apps are not animation apps. Well, now that Photoshop has the Extended version, you could do it there, couldn’t you???
[David Cherniack] “3. The discussion is about why it’s not in AE. Not why it should or shouldn’t be done.”
Gee, I didn’t know that you owned the site, David. And I was unaware that throwing ideas into the discussion was verboten. I just checked the policies and code of conduct page and didn’t see any such thing…
Also, held to such a ludicrous limitation, this thread would be merely useless supposition and speculation. There would be absolutely NOTHING of substance in it.
[David Cherniack] “4. Why, pray, bring caps into the discussion.”
It’s called “illustrating a point,” and it is something that people do to support ideas.
Lastly, these boards are for FAR MORE than just answering your question(s), David. There are many less experienced users here, as well as many very experienced users.
The boards are here to broaden people’s perspectives and understanding of things.
If you want to hold it to a “you can only answer my question or I’ll fold my arms across my chest and hold my breath” formula, feel free.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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In case you weren’t aware of it, here’s a link to the feature-request form for After Effects:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform&product=57
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[Ron Lindeboom] “these boards are for FAR MORE than just answering your question(s), David. There are many less experienced users here, as well as many very experienced users.
The boards are here to broaden people’s perspectives and understanding of things.
If you want to hold it to a “you can only answer my question or I’ll fold my arms across my chest and hold my breath” formula, feel free.”
Ron,
None of that was my intent. Sorry if it came off that way. The questions were posed in the friendly spirit of debate.
David
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Excellent solution, one which can be applied to …. ____ —- and others …
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The biggest reason is: there’s no reason to.
AE already has tons of ways of drawing lines, stretching them, yatta yatta, either with masks, with “write on” effects, etc. The fact is, yes, underlining is very bad form, but there are ways of using it well in animation, but those ways are typically going to need to be separate from the text itself, in order to work fully. Things like horizontal lines that jut across the screen and under text (I do that quite frequently in spots). You can’t do that with simple underlines, so why even bother with them?
You’ll notice that there’s a lot of simple things that you can’t do in AE because AE is designed to be a more robust, involved program to do more complex operation. You can do ANYTHING in AE, but simpler stuff tends to be more complex then it would be in a simpler program. You can make and manipulate underlines just as well, you just have to do it yourself.
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[Prime Mover] “You can make and manipulate underlines just as well, you just have to do it yourself.”
Which is exactly what I did, animating a thin rectangular shape. Not the most brilliant of solutions but it works.
David
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1. Underlining judiciously has its place, especially in headings.
No to #1. Headings should NEVER be underlined. This is one of the biggest mistakes people make. A good looking document will always resort to using other techniques like using a different font, or larger point size with bold.
– If you want to give the document character, use a fantasy or less traditional font for headings
– If the document is in a serif font (Times New Roman, Garamond, etc.) a great practice is to use a large san-serif font for headings. San-serif fonts are slower to read in big blocks of text, but tend to call attention to themselves more, which is better for headings.
– If it’s a in-house business document, just use a larger typeface, or bold, or both.
– Use you’re page layout to separate the headers from the body of the text. Indent, or justfy right, if it’s appropriate for your design.
– Use graphical elements from your layout. Horizontal Rules (very different from underlines), or half rules, can separate headers from body text and can be worked into the overall format.
Underlines are an almost absolute no-no. The ONLY time you would ever underline things is if you want to point out specific points in the body, and it’s a completely informal document (ie: internal business memo).
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What’s your feeling about the headings in an informal two column table? – on screen of course. I did try the options you suggest, but in the end I felt that underling the headings worked best. Call me crazy.
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Two times when one may want to underline: 1) Making a citation of a book’s title, according to MLA standards guides, and 2) If needing to make a graphical representation of a web page with hyperlinks underlined. While some web pages don’t do this and many people disable this in their browsers, to much of the general populace, underlined text means “hyperlink”.
There may be other examples, too, but those come immediately to mind. I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be offered in AE; I’m just noting two situations where a bigger font or italics might not be a better option.
-Rob
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