On Jan 11, 2012, at 09:51, John Gilmore wrote: > > The name 'underscore' for the character '_' is at best a misnomer. > It cannot be put under another character. In standard IBM terminology > it is a break character. > You've sometimes admonished me for taking the synchronic view rather than the diachronic. But here, you're being narrowly synchronic. In the Bad Old Days of Yore, mechanical serial printers could be commanded to underscore with the sequence <underscore><backspace><character-to-be-underscored>. In this diachronic perspective, "underscore" is not a misnomer, merely antiquated.
-- gil
