How about "<whitespace-or-punctation-or-beginning-of-the line>**bold**<whitespace-or-punctation-or-end-of-the-line>"? -- RadomirDopieralski

Yes, those are both fine. -- ChuckSmith

"  **bold** This might be problematic as it is a collision with bullet lists "
- So might it be useful to pick another character instead of *  ? [MarkGaved] - 30-Aug-06

Asterisk are a very deeply rooted tradition. Kind of. Usually single asterisks were used, though. I wonder if it's good to have "visual" formatting, like bold and italics, or better have "semantic" one, like ephasis and strong emphasis, like in html? -- RadomirDopieralski 2006-08-30

----

It's my belief that the asterisks don't really collide with bullet lists, except in rare cases.  You see, if we require that 

# bullet lists start at first column, and
# bullet lists can't start with two asterisks (which probably makes sense, you can't start with a two-deep indentation anyway)

Then the only possible collision is the case where the user ''intends'' to start a line with a bold statement just right after a bullet list has finished - without a paragraph break.  I.e.

{{{
* this is a bullet list
* This is a bullet list, too
**bold thingy**
}}}

However, I think the visual cue is quite enough for people.  This, after all, looks more like a bullet list continuation than a bold thing.  So it would be easy for an user to correct the problem and add an extra paragraph break.

-- JanneJalkanen, 2006-08-31

I agree with Janne.  -- ChuckSmith, 2006-08-31