To me, it actually adds visual complexity while eliminating the useful visual cue of a single line being a single link. Here, there are many lines, which to me indicate many links. In some cases, the line may present as dotted or dashed (the word "piggy" randomly came to mind) — things that signify something other than a link to me.
I would rather descenders weren't subsumed by the line either, but interrupting the element itself instead seems like as much as a problem as it is a solution.
I think this is a very reasonable criticism, particularly about words like “piggy”—no doubt typography is *ing hard.
Like is often the case with design, there are trade-offs. In this case I think the readability improvements to links with descenders outweighs the visual cue / scannability of links, particularly because I think links with more-descenders-than-non are not as common.
An interesting experiment might be to try to turn off the effect on words which fail some check (a high percentage of descender glyphs, for example). I created an issue on GitHub [1]—definitely something worth exploring. Thanks!
I concur. I've been trained that seeing a break in the underline means I'm looking at a phrase or fragment broken into multiple links. Reading the whole page did nothing to break in my brain to the concept. I do not agree with Mr. Schwartz that this style will "[i]mprove the typography on your website."
As an aside, I love Butterick's link style, what with the triangle and the background-changing color hovers, but that's too complicated for a general audience--especially one reading on the newest touch-screen whatsit that can't show you the "◊Amazon" word is actually a link to Amazon until you accidentally tap it.
But that's a great style for reading long-form articles because your brain isn't constantly interrupting you to say, "Ah, please compulsively hover over that underlined text so I can see what website this insightful blogpost is referencing."
You can also see some dotting/dashing in the link on the page to the Butterick book.
I have a hunch using a faded color for the (possibly-then-thicker) underline would work better - the foreground descenders would retain distinction, without the noise of dotty/dashy line-ends.
I would rather descenders weren't subsumed by the line either, but interrupting the element itself instead seems like as much as a problem as it is a solution.