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. There are 95 printable ASCII characters, numbered 32 to 126. ... A computer keyboard is a peripheral modelled after the typewriter keyboard. ... A hyphen ( -, or ‐ ) is a punctuation mark. ... 0 (zero), alternatively called naught or nought, is both a number and a numeral. ...

It is a character left over from the typewriter. Prior to the advent of word processing, using the underscore character was the only method of underlining words. To produce an underlined word, the word was typed, the typewriter carriage was then moved back to the beginning of the word and the word was overtyped with the underscore character. An underline is a horizontal line placed below a portion of text to show emphasis, or for titles of longer works (books, movies, etc. ...

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. A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ... The term African languages refers to the approximately 1800 languages spoken in Africa. ... Native American languages are the indigenous languages of the Americas, spoken by Native Americans from the southern tip of South America to Alaska and Greenland. ... Unicode is an international standard whose goal is to provide the means by which text of all forms and languages can be encoded for use by computers. ... A romanization or latinization is a system for representing a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, where the original word or language used a different writing system. ... The Arabic language (; , less formally, ) is the largest member of the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family (classification: South Central Semitic) and is closely related to Hebrew and Aramaic. ... Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by 6 million people mainly in Israel, parts of the Palestinian territories, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ...

It is also often used instead of a space in computer operating systems, file names, and in World Wide Web URLs. A computer is a device or machine for processing information from data according to a program — a compiled list of instruction. ... In computing, an operating system (OS) is the system software responsible for the direct control and management of hardware and basic system operations. ... Graphic representation of the World Wide Web around Wikipedia The World Wide Web (WWW, W3, or simply Web) is an information space in which the items of interest, referred to as resources, are identified by global identifiers called Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). ... A Uniform Resource Locator, URL (spelled out as an acronym, not pronounced as earl), or Web address, is a standardized address name layout for resources (such as documents or images) on the Internet (or elsewhere). ...

Some computer applications will automatically underline text surrounded by underscores: _underlined_ will render underlined. It is also conventionally used in this fashion on Usenet, an ASCII-only medium, to indicate underlining. Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ...

However, Microsoft Word changes text input between underscores to italics. (Text input between asterisks [*xxx*] is changed to bold text.) Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) (HKSE: 4338) is the worlds largest software company, with global annual sales in the tens of billions of US dollars and more than 55,000 employees in 85 countries and regions. ... Microsoft Word is a word processing application from Microsoft. ...

It is not a dash, and should not be used as such (although an apparent convention for text news wires is to use an underscore when a em-dash or en-dash is desired, or when other non-standard characters such as bullets would be appropriate). 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. Indeed, whole 'Notes' pages can be created by simply pressing the underscore key patiently and waiting for the page to be filled (although the danger always exists of overshooting and ending up with unwanted pages half-filled with ___s that cannot seem to be deleted even if the underscores are). A dash is a punctuation mark, and is not to be confused with the hyphen, which has quite different uses. ... In journalism, news agencies are bodies established to supply news reports to newspapers, magazines, and radio and television broadcasters. ... In typography, a bullet is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list, like below: This is the text of a list item. ...

Underscores are also commonly used in URLs and e-mail addresses to replace spaces, as spaces cannot be used; i.e. one would not make their email address "Underscore User@example.com," but "Underscore_User@example.com" A Uniform Resource Locator, URL (spelled out as an acronym, not pronounced as earl), or Web address, is a standardized address name layout for resources (such as documents or images) on the Internet (or elsewhere). ... An e-mail address identifies a location to which e-mail can be delivered. ...