
Ask HN: Why do ppl surround words with underscores? - alistproducer2
I&#x27;ve tried Googling but I haven&#x27;t been able to figure it out. I&#x27;ve seen it used exclusively by hacker-types and have always wondered what it was about.
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corysama
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.

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viraptor
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.

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

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

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

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sjs382
It's shorthand for text foratting when you only have ascii characters to dela
with.

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

