On: Reclaim the Stack

[efilife]

Fyi, we use asterisks (*) for emphasis on HN

[willvarfar → efilife]

underscores around italics and asterisk around strong/bold was an informal convention on bbs, irc and forums way before atx/markdown.

[efilife → willvarfar]

I'm talking about the HN markup, italics don't work here, only asterisks do

[efilife → efilife]

I meant underscores, just noticed

[Kiro → efilife]

Different thing. Using visible _ is a conscious choice.

[efilife → Kiro]

Why?

[Kiro → efilife]

It looks nice and has been a staple in hacker culture for decades, long before we had rich text and were just chatting on IRC.

[efilife → Kiro]

It doesn't look nice at all to me. Real emphasis looks way nicer, that's its purpose. Now that we have rich text, why not utilize it?

[Kiro → efilife]

I use both and will continue to do so. You're trying to lecture people who have been on HN for more than 10 years how "we" do stuff around here.

[efilife → Kiro]

There's so much wrong with this reply I won't even bother trying to respond, I feel the negativity of this comment pour through my screen

[sph → Kiro]

Also it looks like _underlined_ text

[komali2 → efilife]

Who's "we?"

[mkl → komali2]

Everyone who uses italics on HN, which is a lot of us: https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

[komali2 → mkl]

Not to be a pedantic asshole, but those guidelines don't mention italicizing as emphasis, just that * causes italicizes. In fact the OP should probably say that they believe "HN users use italicization to emphasize," which again, who's "we?" _This_ style of emphasis, as others have mentioned, has been bouncing around IRC and whatnot forever.

[efilife → komali2]

Most of HN users