Bold And Italics Reasoning

Bold options:

*bold*
**bold**
__bold__
'''bold'''

Italic options:

/italics/
//italics//
_italics_
''italics''

A star (*) is the most used symbol to bold text online. A slash (/) looks like slanted italics, so it is intuitive and thus easier to remember. Double symbols are generally used in Creole to avoid accidentally parsing text not meant to be parsed.

The underscore (_) was not chosen, because that could be confused for underlining.

The double single quote ('') and triple single quote (''') were not chosen, because they could be confused for a regular quotemark (") and is not clear that it is for emphasis. Also, having to use quintuple quotes (''''') to open and close bold italics gets really confusing.