Get underlined text with Markdown

I am using BlueCloth as a Markdown library for Ruby, and I can't find any syntax for getting a text underlined. What is it?

Solution 1:

In GitHub markdown <ins>text</ins> works just fine.

Solution 2:

Markdown doesn't have a defined syntax to underline text.

I guess this is because underlined text is hard to read, and that it's usually used for hyperlinks.

Solution 3:

Another reason is that <u> tags are deprecated in XHTML and HTML5, so it would need to produce something like <span style="text-decoration:underline">this</span>. (IMHO, if <u> is deprecated, so should be <b> and <i>.) Note that Markdown produces <strong> and <em> instead of <b> and <i>, respectively, which explains the purpose of the text therein instead of its formatting. Formatting should be handled by stylesheets.

Update: The <u> element is no longer deprecated in HTML5.