ESL General English Grammar Questions

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

Goodman — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:26:47 GMT

Slam_54 @ yahoo - this dash is [ underscore]

Slam54@yahoo - this is [underline]

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 20:48:39 GMT

We want to say:

Underline

Under_score

It's so simple as well!

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

CalifJim — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 17:13:18 GMT

I'm just wondering now whether we could use a distinction between underline and underscore

I think we could indeed.
(But you all knew that already from my previous posts! )

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

davkett — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 13:35:23 GMT

CalifJim wrote:
Gosh! There's been a lot of activity on this thread since I visited last.

I'm just wondering now whether we could use a distinction between underline and underscore-- a distinction that has not yet made its way into dictionaries --and a symbol for each, i.e., underline: "U", a line drawn under a single word or phrase of text; underscore: "_" , a line drawn under the single space between units of text.

Shall we vote?

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

CalifJim — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 05:22:58 GMT

Gosh! There's been a lot of activity on this thread since I visited last.
My answer was simply an answer to the original poster, who asked what Americans called the symbol "_". Since I work in data processing in the U.S. and have seen that symbol daily for many years, I felt I could easily answer -- at least what all the people I know in data processing say all the time: "underscore". It is used primarily as a connective symbol, thus: purchase_order_amount. It serves two purposes: It allows an entire string of symbols, unbroken by any spaces -- as required by most computer languages, to be used to represent a certain entity, and it allows the human reader to read it easily. (It's easier to read than purchordamt, for example, which represents an older style of coding.) Long story short, if you ask a programmer to read the variable name task_hours over the phone, he or she will say, "T, A, S, K, underscore, H, O, U, R, S".

Underlines, in this sort of work, are not individual characters like the underscore is. They are a format applied to a string of characters in a given font. Working in that context, is an underlined space, rarely seen in isolation, of course. The way many fonts work, it may be impossible to see an underlined underscore, but internally, it is represented by the code for the underscore accompanied by the code which designates that the underscore symbol occurs underlined!

as_in_this_grouping Yes, I typed underscores between those words, then applied underlining! Can you tell? Surprisingly to me, it does show as two different elements on my screen.

CJ

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

davkett — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 04:52:49 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:

Well, you can use underlining on e.g. a typewriter

That's it! I was thinking of the "_" key on a typewriter (from ancient times), not on a keyboard. So back to my earlier post in which I'm perplexed about where the disagreement stands on the question of the symbol.

I don't consider this question resolved yet.

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

MrPedantic — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:34:22 GMT

Well, you can use underlining on e.g. a typewriter, or in handwritten texts, in place of italics (in scientific names, etc). And MS seems to have picked up on this, as any Word text surrounded by underscores is autocorrected to italics (if AutoCorrect is "on").

I think underscores are also used for italics in .txt files sometimes.

MrP

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

davkett — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:22:16 GMT

MrPedantic wrote:

I don't think you can use the keyboard symbol _ to underline anything, can you? (In fact, it seems more usual to use it for creating italics.)

MrP

You're right. I don't know what I was thinking.

How do you use it for italics?

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

paco2004 — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:18:10 GMT

Ugggh .. When I was young, alcoholic bevergages were substantive but now they are abstract one : alcoholic beverage.

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

MrPedantic — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 02:12:08 GMT

Paco2004 wrote:

...'underbar'....

Surely that would require several alcoholic beverages?

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

paco2004 — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:30:05 GMT

I agree. The simple "_" with no letter upon it should be called 'underscore'. BTW when I see "_", I come to have a desire for alcoholic beverage. It is because here in Japan people often call "_" as 'underbar'.

paco

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

MrPedantic — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 01:03:45 GMT

I don't think you can use the keyboard symbol _ to underline anything, can you? (In fact, it seems more usual to use it for creating italics.)

MrP

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

paco2004 — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 08:08:11 GMT

OED says:
           Underscore : A line drawn below a word, etc..
           Underline : A line drawn below a word written or printed.
Webster says:
           Underscore : A line drawn underneath (especially a written matter).
           Underline : A line drawn underneath (especially a written matter).
So we can conclude they are synonymous.

"The underline is â¦" googles 10700 sites and "the underscore" 31,700 sites.
There seems no difference in preference between AmE and BrE.

paco

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

davkett — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 08:04:57 GMT

Merriam-Webster barely distinguishes these two words, either in their verb or noun forms, and gives symbols for neither.

So I'm unsure what we're talking about. E-mail address terminology?

Right here in the 'Post Message' box, we have the symbol "U", (which states "underline" when one places a mouse pointer on it). On the keyboard, we have "_" which is a symbol that functions both for drawing a line under the text, and placing a single-unit horizontal mark under the empty space between the text. Do we have different words for these two functions, but only a symbol for one.

What do you say, CJ?

Re: underline/underscore (American English)

adomi — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 07:39:12 GMT

There is no "underline" symbol in my dictionary, but I think when we say "underline", we all know a line has to be drawn under something(a letter, a word...), or something is stressed.