
Ask HN: Why do people use TM when talking about non-trademarked terms? - steev
I have noticed with a fair amount of frequency people will commonly say things like &quot;...It Just Works (TM)...&quot; or, from a post today, &quot;...real (TM) open source...&quot;. I see this here on HN, Reddit, and Stack Overflow.<p>What is the purpose of this? I assume it is similar to people starting sentences with &quot;I mean...&quot; or ending statements with question marks that are not questions (e.g., &quot;I use this technology all the time?&quot;). I do not understand what effect is trying to be achieved by this usage. Is it emphasis? If so, why not use underscores, which are used in Markdown to achieve the same?<p>Edit: added sites where I commonly see this idiom.
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vhodges
This explains the gist of it better than I can
[https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/17108/what-is-the-
tm...](https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/17108/what-is-the-tm-of-do-the-
right-thingtm)

