Ask HN: Why do ppl surround words with underscores? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why do ppl surround words with underscores?

I've tried Googling but I haven't been able to figure it out. I've seen it used exclusively by hacker-types and have always wondered what it was about.

View on HN

I'm typing words in a comment. I want to underline one of them, but HN doesn't support that. So, I surround the word with _underscores_ and hope that you understand what I meant. Same for /slashes/ to indicate an italicized word.

It's just used to emphasise a word. Asterisks, _underscores_, /slashes/, -hyphens-: they all work for that.

It just lately got more standardised with the markup languages that they actually correspond to bold, underscore, italic, etc.

In some implementations of markdown underscores italicize the word(s) they surround. On HN this is achieved with asterisks.

I could have sworn I saw it used in email in like 1997 to indicate underscores in plaintext.

Yup. Markdown is directly inspired by this _𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔦𝔢𝔫𝔱_ convention ;)

It's shorthand for text foratting when you only have ascii characters to dela with.

    *Bold*, _underline_, /italics/, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com