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Re:Snapchat Is for Flirting by CydeWeys on Thursday March 09, 2017 @08:24PM (#13835541)
Correction on that RFC: The 1969 version was handwritten, and likely did not use underscores for emphasis (who does that in handwriting?). It was typed up electronically in what looks to be 2002, and plenty of examples of the underscore notation exist prior to then.
Re:Snapchat Is for Flirting by Houshalter on Thursday March 09, 2017 @09:27PM (#13835830)
Not in handwriting but on typewriters, which didn't have italics. Underlining text was used for emphasis on typewritten documents. Which is probably the origin of this convention. You can't underline in plain ASCII either, so people started putting underline characters _around_ words instead.