On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 10:12 PM, Timothy S. Nelson <wayl...@wayland.id.au>wrote:
> There's a school of thought, common among printing/publishing types, that >> insists that underline was intended solely to replace italics when they >> couldn't be represented (i.e. no fonts, as with ASCII terminals and >> printers). Thus Markdown's use of _italic_. (See also nroff.) >> > > I'm aware of that idea, and don't use underlining myself for that > reason. But since /italic/ looks like italic, and _underline_ looks like > underline, why are we using the thing that looks like underline for italics? > I mean, sure, I'm happy to get rid of _underline_ if that's what people > want, but using _ for italic is just ... well, I don't see any sense in it. If I recall correctly, this was a limitation of typewriters. Typewriters were incapable of displaying italics so underlining was taught as a replacement, though italics are/were considered the professional format. I somehow doubt that Markdown chose the _ for italics for that reason, though I will say that wayland's suggestion just makes more sense. -Jason "s1n" Switzer
