URLs with underscores

[John Gruber]

Jonathan Barrett <jonathan at relativesanity.com> wrote on 07/06/05 at 9:18 pm:


> Interestingly, whenever I've explained Markdown-like syntax to a  

> layperson, they don't understand why _this_ is italicised and not  

> underlined.


My explanation for that would be that underlining should never be
used for anything other than hyperlinks.

Early on during Markdown's development -- long before it was public
-- I considered using `_` as the link delimiter. Something like:

    There's _a link_ [1] here.
    
    [1]: http://example.com/



> Maybe the real issue here is that _ is simply the wrong character to  

> use...


I personally almost never use `_` for emphasis, but I know many
others use it the other way, and almost never use `*`.

-J.G.