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Comment by dandigangi | Hacker News Reader

Random question - what are the _underscores_ that show up frequently in Linus's responses?

An old way to underline.

To cite the jargon file:

  Also, it is common to use bracketing with unusual
  characters to signify emphasis. The asterisk is most
  common, as in “What the *hell*?” even though this
  interferes with the common use of the asterisk suffix
  as a footnote mark. The underscore is also common,
  suggesting underlining

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/writing-style.html

It's for emphasis. Some people use asterisks. He uses underscores.

Note he uses both, even in the same paragraph - asterisks typically mean "bold," whereas underscores typically mean "underlined."

Except in Slack, which somehow interprets this to be italics.

Markdown started that in general. There's no way to underline something in Markdown; underlining just isn't supported.

Underlining was a substitute for italics before everyone had fancy word processors.

They were always meant for emphasis, which takes on variable definitions over time. Terminals were bad at italics due to character box layouts and so the literary approach of emphasis through italics mutated into emphasis through underlines. Now that we’re all free of monospaced terminal grids, it looks like we’re drifting back to emphasis through italics.

Italics were still used though.

Like /this/.

Back in the days of usenet, and way before markdown, we always used bold, /italic/, and _underline_. You were just supposed to mentally interpret them in your head.

Edit: Ironically, HN is translating my asterisk-bolds into italic.

Meant to be underline the word between.

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