# Legacy EM

## Summary

The Legacy EM extension restores Markdown’s original behavior for emphasis and strong syntax when using underscores.

By default Python-Markdown treats `_connected_words_` intelligently by recognizing that mid-word underscores should not be used for emphasis. In other words, by default, that input would result in this output: `<em>connected_words</em>`.

However, that behavior is not consistent with the original rules or the behavior of the reference implementation. Therefore, this extension can be used to better match the reference implementation. With the extension enabled, the above input would result in this output: `<em>connected</em>words_`.

Note

This extension is in maintenance mode. We will continue to fix bugs and keep it up-to-date with the core parser, but no new features or changes in behavior will be made. If you need a feature that this extension does not offer, then you have three options (1) find an existing third-party extension which meets your needs, (2) build your own extension, or (3) fork this extension (pursuant to its licensing requirements) and maintain it as a third-party extension.

## Usage

See Extensions for general extension usage. Use `legacy_em` as the name of the extension.

This extension does not accept any special configuration options.

A trivial example:

    markdown.markdown(some_text, extensions=['legacy_em'])