Re: Improved (non-annoying) underlining

[Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>]

Karl Kleinpaste <karl@charcoal.com> writes:

> So _this_ /kind/ of *emphasis* is the "ASCII art" way of _*showing*_
> _/real/_ */typographical/* _*/variation/*_.

Well, no, actually, it's not.  It may have started that way, but it's
become a language in its own right.  Saying *strong* is not the same thing
as a bold "strong" or an italic "strong," just like an underlined "strong"
isn't the same thing as an italic "strong" (although it's sometimes used
as an approximation).  It's no longer ASCII art, although it may once have
been.  It's punctuation now, just like smilies are, punctuation that
imparts inflection.  I use it as punctuation, and think of it as
punctuation; when I write *strong*, I'm not thinking "I want a bold
'strong' here but I can't do that in plain text."  I'm actually expressing
a verbal inflection, and I read *strong* directly as representing that
verbal inflection.

It may be possible to impart the same inflection ranges via more
traditional typographic techniques, but I think it's a massive and
mistaken simplification to claim that _word_ or *word* is nothing more or
less than an ugly way of indicating underline, italic, or bold.  Over the
past twenty years of on-line culture, it's become it's own thing, separate
from typographical conventions.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>