How to Highlight Text in Yahoo! Mail

Email & Messaging

Updated September 30, 2018

Text underlined may not be the prettiest to look at and easiest to read; its appearance may be confused with a link on the web to boot. When you have already used boldface and italics (and spacing letters perhaps) for other—specific—reasons, underscoring would come in handy, in particular for individual words and phrases, if only it would come and appear somewhere in Yahoo! Mail's formatting toolbar.

Fortunately, a toolbar and button are not needed to underline text in Yahoo! Mail. A keyboard shortcut is enough.

How to Underline, Bolden or Italicize Text

To emphasize text in an email with an underline while composing an email:

Highlight the text portion you want to underline.
Press Ctrl-B (Windows, Linux) or Command-B (Mac) for bold text.
Press Ctrl-I (Windows, Linux) or Command-I (Mac) for italics
Press Ctrl-U (Windows, Linux) or Command-U (Mac) for underline.
Note that bold text and italics are preferable for emphasizing. An underscore makes text harder to read, especially if it spans paragraphs.
Underlining individual words (such as new terms) or phrases for a special purpose is fine.

How to Highlight Text With a Color

To call out text with highlighting in an email (by changing its foreground and background color):

Select the text you want to highlight with the mouse or text cursor.
Click the Text Color button in the Yahoo! Mail message formatting toolbar.

It sports a white A on a dark background.
Select the desired color for the text itself under Text.
Now choose a highlight color (for the text background) under Highlight.

not all email programs will show your highlighting as you see it while composing. The text should still be legible—and both colors ignored.

It is still best to be careful with white text on a dark background, though.
That's it!