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It's common convention that's a couple decades old at this point, also included in markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example https://en.wikipedia
by sbierwagen 10y ago
It's common convention that's a couple decades old at this point, also included in markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown#Example
RFC 7, from May 1969, used it: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7.txt https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7.txt
- CydeWeys 10y agoCorrection on that RFC: The 1969 version was handwritten, and likely did not use underscores for emphasis (who does that in handwriting?). It was typed up electronically in what looks to be 2002, and plenty of examples of the underscore notation exist prior to then.
- Houshalter 10y agoNot in handwriting but on typewriters, which didn't have italics. Underlining text was used for emphasis on typewritten documents. Which is probably the origin of this convention. You can't underline in plain ASCII either, so people started putting underline characters _around_ words instead.