Hyphenatable material enclosed in group braces

Question

I have text that I need to repeat quite a few times:

\newcommand{\repeatme}{text to repeat that is somewhat long and verbose}

I'd like to underline this text and have it not cause hbox overflow errors. Thus I try (using the soul package, as if I use ulem or underline it'll hbox):

Blah blah blah, \ul{\repeatme}

This gives this error:

I came across hyphenatable material enclosed in group braces,
which I can't handle. Either drop the braces or make the material
unbreakable using an \mbox (\hbox). Note that a space
also counts as possible hyphenation point. See page 4 of the manual.

My current workaround is this:

\newcommand{\repeatmeul}{\ul{text to repeat that is somewhat long and verbose}}

and

Blah blah blah, \repeatmeul

But that fails... wrong. Surely there's a more elegant way!

Answer 1

Hope the MWE explains every thing.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[normalem]{ulem}
\usepackage{soul}
%----------------------------------------------------
\newcommand*{\repeatme}{text to repeat that 
is somewhat long and verbose} %<----without underline
%----------------------------------------------------
\newcommand{\repeatmeul}{\uline{text to repeat that 
is somewhat long and verbose}} % ,---using ulem
%----------------------------------------------------
\newcommand{\repeatmeulsoul}{\ul{text to repeat that 
is somewhat long and verbose}} %<--- using soul
%----------------------------------------------------
\begin{document}
This is going to be a small task for \verb|ulem| -- \repeatmeul. 
And  another example of using \verb|soul| -- 
\repeatmeulsoul. And this is with underline -- \ul\repeatme. Here we used 
\verb|soul| package. And a similar one with \verb|ulem| won't work since the material inside \verb|{}| 
is considered as a box -- that won't break.
\end{document} 

This code works with the following output.

Conclusion: Use \ul\repeatme or \repeatmeulsoul using soul package. Or use \repeatmeul using ulem package. Do not use \uline\repeatme from ulem, it won't work.

PS: If this MWE doen't work for you, you should consider updating your packages.

Answer 2

The following surely works (with soul)

\expandafter\ul\expandafter{\repeatme}

It's always a pain to get things expanded inside \ul or similar commands. On the other hand, underlining is frowned upon in typographic circles.

With \expandafter\ul\expandafter{\repeatme}, the macro \ul is presented the expansion of \repeatme rather than the macro itself, so that this is equivalent to writing

\ul{text to repeat that is somewhat long and verbose}

but shorter.