Is there a way to write an "empty field"?

Question

It is quite common (especially in the single-word-request tag) to want an "empty field" for example phrases:

"Having children of my own ________ me"

Since markdown uses underscores for formatting, it has a tendency to eat up or mess with underscores. However, as you can see, if you use enough underscores, a few will still get through, but the result is a bit "choppy".

I wasn't sure which tags to use: is there any way around this problem (discussion), or is it possible to change the parser to treat a string of 3+ underscores as plaintext instead of trying to format it (feature-request)?

Answer 1

The best solution is to escape the underscore with the backslash. Using a backslash forces the following character to be used literally rather than as part of Markdown formatting:

\_\_\_\_\_\_
______

You could also use code formatting (with backticks), which is always literal, but that also adds a grey background which may not be universally liked.

______

Click Edit below to see how this post is formatted. If you can't do that, here's a picture:

Answer 2

The gray box produced by <code> tags / backticks might even be turned into an advantage:

"Having children of my own <code>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</code> me" 

• "Having children of my own             me"

or, perhaps more simply:

"Having children of my own `...........` me" 

• "Having children of my own ........... me"

(Somehow, the dots look a lot nicer than underscores in combination with the box, at least IMO.)

Yes, I realize that this is kind of abusing the markup, but honestly, how often do you see real code on ELU?

Answer 3

The closest solution I have found is using ASCII character 242 since it isn't parsed by Markdown, but in some fonts, it shows up as double underscores:

"Having children of my own ‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗ me"