Closer underline

Question

I am currently using \underline{...} to underline text.

However, I want the underline to be closer to the letters (as of now, there's too much whitespace between the letters and the line). Is there a simple way to do this?

Answer 1

\underline{<stuff>} underlines a box containing <stuff>. However, this also implies that <stuff> with descenders pushes the underline lower. \smash{<stuff>} removes any depth (and height) from <stuff>, allowing for the regular non-descender depth of the underline:

\underline{\smash{<stuff>}}

Alternatively, the soul package provides underlining features. Here's a minimal example:

\documentclass{article}
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}% Just for this example
\usepackage{soul}% http://ctan.org/pkg/soul
\begin{document}
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. \par
\underline{The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.} \par
\underline{\smash{The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.}}

\setul{5pt}{.4pt}% 5pt below contents
\ul{The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.} \par
\setul{1pt}{.4pt}% 1pt below contents
\ul{The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.} \par
\end{document}​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

See the soul package documentation (section 4 Underlining, p 11 onward) for more information regarding settings and underlining control.