Yes, that's annoying. ID cannot find/change something based on soft line endings, so a Javascript would come in handy. (Audience: "Javascript?") Sure, no problem. Copy and paste the following one into a plain text editor (Notepad, TextEdit in plain text mode; best is Adobe's own ESTK editor that comes installed with InDesign) and save into your User Scripts folder as "NoUnderline.jsx". Select an appropriate amount of text, and run the script. It will add a character style to underlined spaces at the end of each line, and leave other end characters (such as soft hyphens) alone. If your text changes and you want the underlines back, do the following:

1. Edit the character style "NoUnderline"; set Underlining on.

2. Delete the character style; select "Preserve Formatting".

3. Run the script again on your selection of text.

Alternatively, select a run of text and remove the character style by replacing it with "[None]" and restore Underline in the Change Formatting box.

Here's the script:

//DESCRIPTION: Begone, Ugly End Of Line Underlining!

// (c) Jongware 16-Dec-2009



try {

 blankStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("NoUnderline");

} catch (_)

{

 blankStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.add();

 blankStyle.name = "NoUnderline";

 blankStyle.underline = false;

}



for (a=0; a<app.selection[0].lines.length; a++)

{

  if (app.selection[0].lines[a].characters.item(-1).contents == " ")

    app.selection[0].lines[a].characters.item(-1).appliedCharacterStyle = blankStyle;

}

That's odd. The script is written & tested for CS4, but it ought to work for CS3 as well. (You are not using an even older version, are you?)

Can you check if it actually creates a character style called "NoUnderline"? If there isn't one, it should make it automatically. (FYI, the variable 'blankStyle' should point to this character style, and should apply it in lline 31.)

It seems you didn't do anything wrong copying or running the script, as it would never have made it all the way to that line.

Choke my throat and call me a smurf. I tested the script, and I am so positive it worked yesterday! But something goes wrong right at the very start -- I stated that 'it should create the style automatically if it doesn't exist yet', and, for sure, that's the part where it fails!

Here is a new, improved version. Better, stronger, faster ... well, it works. (I double-checked this time )

If you have a dedicated "Underline" character style as well, it makes removing this a bit easier. Just delete the style "NoUnderline" and replace with "Underline". Then re-run the script, and it will re-create the style. (Honestly.)

//DESCRIPTION: Begone, Ugly End Of Line Underlining!

// (c) Jongware 16-Dec-2009

var blankStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.item("NoUnderline");

try { blankStyle.index; } catch(_)

{

blankStyle = undefined;

}

if (blankStyle == undefined)

{

blankStyle = app.activeDocument.characterStyles.add();

blankStyle.name = "NoUnderline";

blankStyle.underline = false;

}

for (a=0; a<app.selection[0].lines.length; a++)

{

if (app.selection[0].lines[a].characters.item(-1).contents == " ")

app.selection[0].lines[a].characters.item(-1).appliedCharacterStyle = blankStyle;

}

Ouch! Fortunately, you copied the error message exactly, so I can tell you right away what's wrong. (I hope.)

Since this forum is brand new, there isn't as yet an option to format code. I gave it a manual try in my first post, underhandedly editing the raw HTML for the message, so the script would show up as plain code. And one of the things that happen automatically is that double quotes do not get translated into the curly ones that show up in text! (Let me show. I type "Hey, Emily, cheer up! Almost there!" with straight quotes in the message editor. You'll see them as curly ones on your screen.)

As it was a sort of hacking David's otherwise very pretty new forum, and it also was a bit of trouble (and not really worth that either), I plainly copied the new script out of my editor into the message editor. And, well, there's when it went wrong. Both single quotes (which I didn't use) and double quotes in a script need to be of the straight up kind. If you use Adobe's own ESTK to edit the script, you'll see it recognizes the text strings and will change its colour when changed to the correct quotes.

Let's say I'm fairly confident it ought to work now.