From: Ellen K. 

Ah.  Yes, I didn't know that either.

On Sun, 19 Nov 2006 12:04:50 -0500, Gary Britt
 wrote in message
:

>They were adding emphasis to the word as a substitute.  Just didn't know
>such things were ever really read and used by a word processor or email
program.
>
>Gary
>
>Ellen K. wrote:
>>  What did you think in the past when you saw people put asterisks or
>> underscores around words?
>>
>> On Mon, 13 Nov 2006 15:24:17 -0500, Gary Britt
>>  wrote in message
:
>>
>>> I see these conventions can't be used together as the
"thanks" below didn't
>>> come out bold-italic.  /Oh Well/.
>>>
>>> I had never heard of these conventions before, so this was something new
for me.
>>>
>>> Gary
>>>
>>> Gary Britt wrote:
>>>> Came out just *fine* in my Thunderbird display.  The bold
was bold and
>>>> the underline was underlined.   I also like Thunderbird's ability to
>>>> receive plain text from a news group or wherever but display it in
>>>> proportional spaced html style text.  Much nicer to read that way.
>>>>
>>>> */Thanks,/*
>>>>
>>>> Gary
>>>>
>>>> Gary Britt wrote:
>>>>> OK, so this is *bold* then  and this would be _underlined_.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> Gary
>>>>>
>>>>> Tony Williams wrote:
>>>>>> Gary Britt wrote:
>>>>>>> When composing in plain text with Thunderbird
how do you change the
>>>>>>> color or bold or italic of a particular word??
>>>>>> It's really pretty limited and I don't think you
can do colour. I
>>>>>> just enclose sections in asterisks for *bold*,
forward slashes for
>>>>>> /italics/ and underscores for _underline_. No
guarantees that these
>>>>>> informal conventions will be understood by the recipients'
>>>>>> newsreaders, but at least they're readable by anything.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If you do feel the need to talk about politics
there's always CAPS
>>>>>> LOCK ;)
>>>>>>
>>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5