Use line tool or underline??

[Awitmer]

Hello all!

I have always been under the impression that it is always better to draw

lines with the line tool (in a form for example) instead of using the

underline key either manually or as a tab leader. Is that the truth? In some

cases I have seen gaps in the lines when the underline key is used. Do you

all have any thoughts or input for me? Why or why not is it better to use

the line tool as opposed to the underline option?

Thanks!

[Derek Cross]

Create a Paragraph or Character Style (as appropriate) and use the underline feature.

[Derek Cross]

And just one reason for using Styles, say you've got a 500 page book with certain words underlined throughout. The customer decides s/he doesn't like them as 1pt underlines and wants them as 2 pt underlines and in a color. How long would that take to change? With a Character Style it would take seconds to change the whole book!

[davburk96]

What you are saying makes sense, but I'm sorry I am not wanting to underline letters. I am just wanting to make blanks to fill in information on. See my screenshot. Does that make sense?

[SJRiegel]

In this case, create the underline style and apply it to the tab, or set the tab leader to underline.

[Awitmer]

Oops! I was signed into the wrong account when I made my reply to Derek Cross. Huckabuck Zimmerman is me. Sorry about that!

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

I prefer to define an underline as a leader character with a right-align tab. Sometimes it appears that there are spaces between the lines in InDesign, but they don't print that way.

~Barb

[Awitmer]

Has anybody every seen the spaces between lines in the final printed output? I have already.

[Steve Werner]

I have not seen in a high-resolution project. I'm guessing that it might not be rendered perfectly on some low-resolution printers using their own printer drivers.

[Migintosh]

Awitmer  wrote

Has anybody every seen the spaces between lines in the final printed output? I have already.

If you are using the underscore glyph as a fill character in a tab, you could get spaces between if you have applied tracking or kerning. The bottom image has a tracking setting of 10, while the top one has none.

Maybe not the cause of your issue, but a possibility.

[Awitmer]

Ok, your answers make perfect sense. It could be that the problem with the gapped lines in the final output was indeed a tracking issue.

So am I right that it would just simply be a matter of preference as to how the lines get created—whether by the underline key or using the line tool?

Thanks so much to all of you for your input!

[Barb Binder]

If you draw the lines with the line tool and then you have to edit the text, you will then have to move all of the lines to a new position.

If you use a right-align tab with an underline as a leader and you edit the text, the lines will move with the text.

~Barb

[Steve Werner]

I'll also vote with using underscores with tabs and use them in styles when possible. For all the reasons given above.

[Steve Werner]

Here's a good tutorial about using tabs and underlines, and why not to use the Line tool:

https://indesignsecrets.com/laying-out-basic-non-pdf-forms-using-tabs.php

[vinny38]

Hi.

Although I'd also definitely reject the idea of using line tool, I have to disagree with my esteemed colleagues:

I would vote for a character style applied to tabs.

Either using nested or grep styles - depends on your layout really...

Why is that, you may ask?

Because I'm a maniac and don't like inconsistent spacing

[Steve Werner]

Great for advanced users, Vinny. Not a practical solution for 95% of InDesign users!

[Awitmer]

Thanks to all for your help and answers! This gives me a lot to think about and try!