5 ms·
It has always bothered me that _text_ is not underlined text, but italicized text. Why not /text/ for italicized text. It shows exactly what it is doing. And te
by ianstormtaylor 14y ago
It has always bothered me that _text_ is not underlined text, but italicized text. Why not /text/ for italicized text. It shows exactly what it is doing. And text for bold text.
I also see no reason for text and _text_ to produce the same output. It just seems like a fault in the original spec to me.
- debacle 14y agoIt's a carry-over from long before I started using the Internet (1995?), and I've heard was an artifact of typesetting.
- uvtc 14y agoI think the reasons for those choices are: * It's very uncommon to want your output text actually underlined. * If you really do want underlining, just use <u>this</u>, since it's fine to put raw html in Markdown source. * The most common way folks express emphasis is probably with ✱asterisks✱ (HN won't let me backslash-escape the *). A less-common alternative is to use _underscores_ (though I rarely see that anymore these days). Maybe the distant third most-common way was with /slashes/. I guess Gruber had to draw the line somewhere and just support the first two most common ways to write it. That seems reasonable. Another reason to not use slashes for emphasis: using them might interfere (or at least cause headaches) with writing directory names, fractions 1/2, and "and/or" wordings.
- matthiasv 14y agoIt's been part of email and newsgroup etiquette for ages now. Same goes for the quote blocks. So, why change something that is working for a lot of people in different domains?