Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/9244
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

There is no universal answer to this, as there are many ways of indicating emphasis in plain text. Your best bet is to **read the submission guidelines** of the publication that you're submitting to, as each may have different requirements.

In the case of Daily Science Fiction, they have a page of [story formatting guidelines](http://dailysciencefiction.com/submit/story/formatting). As far as I can tell, they don't want any formatting at all.

Emphasis mine:

> Stories must be submitted as plain text\* via our web form. Please don't put your address, word count, title, name or other information in the form. Please don't retype your entire story--copy and paste it into the form (once you've saved your document as plain text). **If a story is accepted for publication, we'll contact you to incorporate any formatting and layout needed.**
> 
> \*Plain text means no smart quotes, no curvy apostrophes, no magic ellipses, no clever Microsoft formatting that sometimes makes your story harder to read.

I would personally find this somewhat strange, but defying submission guidelines is a certain means to have your story rejected out of hand. If I were submitting to this magazine, I'd look for a way to get clarification on this.

However, in general: Read the submission guidelines. Every publication may have slightly different ones.

Original score: 7