Markdown-Discuss Digest, Vol 26, Issue 22

[Jelks Cabaniss]

Bowerbird at aol.com wrote:

>>   Right. If Markdown were just for me,

>>   I'd have only supported asterisks,

>>   and underscores wouldn't have been used.

>>   But research indicated that

>>   nearly as many people use _this_ as *this*,

>>   which made them both worth supporting.



> well, i have always been under the impression that

> underscores meant italics and asterisks were bold.


_Both_ mean *emphasis*.  Whether such emphasis maps to italics or bold in
print or other visual media is, well, in the brain of the author or software
developer.

That's why you find that many (most?) in semantic [x]HTML have finally moved
up an abstraction layer and write `<em>...</em>` instead of `<i>...</i>`.
The output is by default rendered the same in visual media, but your markup
now reads "this segment is emphasized" instead of "this segment should be
output in an italic font".


/Jelks