# Dropped special characters in usernames

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/dropped-special-characters-in-usernames/125378>\
**Category:** Product Support\
**Created:** [August 10, 2019, 2:33am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dropped-special-characters-in-usernames/125378 "2019-08-10T02:33:24Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 9

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**Author:** ![mentalstring](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mentalstring/32/168934_2.png) [@mentalstring](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mentalstring)\
**Post date:** [February 25, 2020, 8:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dropped-special-characters-in-usernames/125378/9 "2020-02-25T20:57:59Z")

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I’m having a go at this and managed to get leading/trailing dashes on usernames working fine, including on mentions.

Not so lucky with the underscore at start+end of a username because on the message composer the markdown parser seems to have precedence before the @ mentions: the username gets rendered in italic instead of a link.

I’m a bit stuck at the moment on that as I’m not sure where to look to address this. Any tip @Falco?

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