3 ms·
In my experience, underscores are how you underline when you can't underline. Asterisks are emphasis, which is typically italics.
by JoshTriplett 2y ago
In my experience, underscores are how you underline when you can't underline. Asterisks are emphasis, which is typically italics.
- kccqzy 2y agoThat's completely true, but emphasis is normally rendered by italics too. (See for example the <em> element in HTML with the default CSS.) Emphasis is the semantic, italics is the presentation. From this perspective both underscores and single asterisks should render into italics.
- JoshTriplett 2y ago> emphasis is normally rendered by italics too I wasn't disagreeing with that; edited my comment to be clear. Asterisks are emphasis; emphasis is typically italics. I do think that underscores should have been underlining, but unfortunately that's not what Markdown chose.
- glenngillen 2y ago> are how you underline when you can't underline Underscores/underline were a hint on a manuscript to the typesetter that you wanted italic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underscore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underscore). It later became a way to add emphasis (either italic or bold styling) on typewriters as there wasn't a practical way to have bold and italic versions of every character on a mechanical typewriter. Most professionally typeset content (i.e., optimised for legibility through years of experience rather than just whatever your word processor will allow) will not contain underlined content (https://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html https://practicaltypography.com/underlining.html).