However, the SE editor (both in browsers and apps) only recognises (and uses) asterisks. If you select an underscore-delimited italic or bold word, and use the keyboard shortcuts or the buttons on the top to change that formatting, it won't work. The editor will add and remove asterisks.
This makes editing posts that use (and overuse) underscores for formatting annoying.
If it is supported somewhere, it should be supported everywhere. (Or nowhere but I think no one is going to convert all existing posts.) So I would rather ask for adding the support to “SE editor” (or the “SE formatting bar” if I understand the term correctly).
I intuitively used underscore when writing first part of this answer. It is directly available on my keyboard (Czech) while I’d have to use Alt Gr or similar extensions for asterisk. Moreover, these extensions vary across the platforms I use.
Finally, this is a wrong place to discuss it. Ask Ubuntu is not special among other SE sites in this way, so this topic should go to https://meta.stackexchange.com/.
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