

Underscores inserted between letters are very common to make a "multi-word" identifier in languages that cannot handle spaces in identifiers. Underscore predates the existence of lower-case letters in many systems, so often it had to be used to make multi-word identifiers, since CamelCase (see below) was not available. C, developed at Bell Labs in the early 1970s, allowed the underscore in identifiers.

By 1967 the underscore had spread to ASCII, replacing the similarly shaped left-arrow character, ← (see also: PIP).

IBM's report on NPL (the early name of what is now called PL/I) leaves the character set undefined, but specifically mentions the break character, and gives RATE_OF_PAY as an example identifier. IBM's EBCDIC character-coding system, introduced in 1964, added the underscore, which IBM referred to as the "break character". In web browsers, default settings typically distinguish hyperlinks by underlining them (and usually changing their color), but both users and websites can change the settings to make some or all hyperlinks appear differently (or even without distinction from normal text).Īs early output devices ( Teleprinters, CRTs and line printers) could not produce more than one character at a location, it was not possible to underscore text, so early encodings such as ITA2 and the first versions of ASCII had no underscore. It is also sometimes used to create a horizontal line other symbols with similar graphemes, such as hyphens and dashes, are also used for this purpose.
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In a manuscript to be typeset, various forms of underlining (see below) were therefore conventionally used to indicate that text should be set in special type such as italics, part of a procedure known as markup.Ī series of underscores (like _ ) may be used to create a blank to be filled in by hand on a paper form. In printed documents underlining is generally avoided, with italics or small caps often used instead, or (especially in headings) using capitalization, bold type or greater body height (font size). The difference between "macron below" and "low line" is that the latter results in an unbroken underline when it is run together: compare a̱ḇc̱ and a̲b̲c̲ (only the latter should look like abc). The combining diacritic, ◌̱, (Macron below) is similar to the combining low line but its mark is shorter. The underscore is used as a diacritic mark, " combining low line", ◌̲, in some languages of Egypt, some languages using the Rapidolangue orthography in Gabon, Izere in Nigeria, and indigenous languages of the Americas such as Shoshoni and Kiowa. In some languages, the mark is used as combining diacritic and is called a "combining low line". In contexts where no formatting is supported such as in instant messaging, or older email formats, the 'enclosing underscores' markup is sometimes used as a proxy for underlining the word(s) enclosed ( _thus_). The original free-standing underscore character continues in use to create visual spacing within a sequence of characters, where a whitespace character is not permitted (e.g., in computer filenames, email addresses, and in Internet URLs). In modern usage, underscoring is achieved by markup or with combining characters. To produce an underscored word, the word was typed, the typewriter carriage was moved back to the beginning of the word, and the word was overtyped with the underscore character. The underscore character, _, originally appeared on the typewriter and was primarily used to emphasise words as in the proofreader's convention. Its use to add emphasis in modern documents is a deprecated practice. In proofreading, underscoring is a convention that says "set this text in italic type", traditionally used on manuscript or typescript as an instruction to the printer. An underscore, _, also called an underline, low line or low dash, is a line drawn under a segment of text.
