The Underscore reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Jul-2004 (provided by Fixed Reference: snapshots of Wikipedia from wikipedia.org)

Underscore

The underscore _ is the character with ASCII value 95. On the standard US 101/102 computer keyboard it shares a key with the hyphen on the top row, to the right of the 0 key.

It is used as a diacritic mark in some African and Native American languages. The underscore is sometimes used as an underdot (Unicode: COMBINING DOT BELOW) in romanized Arabic and Hebrew.

It is also often used instead of a space in computer operating systems and on the Internet in World Wide Web addresses.

Some applications will automatically underline text surrounded by underscores: _underlined_ will render underlined.

However, Microsoft Word changes text like _word_ to word.

It is not a dash, and should not be used as such. A series of underscores (like _________) may be used to create a blank to be filled in on a form. It is also sometimes used to create a horizontal line, if no other method is available.

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