I wish that markdown formatted bold and italics like this:

  _italic_

  *bold*

instead of:

  _italic_

  *italic*

  __bold__

  **bold**

because stars around a word make it look like it's glowing, sort of like bold does, and underlining a word means to make it italic. Does no one remember this?

In English class, before computers, our teacher told us that certain words are always underlined: book titles, ship names, etc.

In Typing class, our teacher told us that if you submitted a typewritten manuscript to a publisher, what you underlined with your typewriter would be converted to italics in a typeset book. Underlining meant italics. And sure enough, nowadays when everyone has a computer instead of a typewriter, and can make real italics, they tell us that book titles, ship names, etc., ought to be in italics (the same things that my teacher used to tell us should be underlined) https://www.purchase.edu/editorial-style-guide/general-style...

I get kind of why Gruber did it his way. He was caught up in the Semantic Web, where you don't use <i> and <b>, you use <em> and <strong>, and <strong> means <em> only more so. So by that logic

  *this*

is emphatic, and

  **this**

is strongly emphatic.