In Microsoft Word, when you enter a word with asterisks around it like *this*, Word converts the text into bold so that instead of *this* you get this. It does a similar thing with underscores; if you surround a word with underscores it converts it to italics so that instead of _this_ you get this.

If you use this feature to quickly generate bold and italic text, that's a great feature for you. But if you want to keep the asterisks or underscores, this auto formatting can be a real distraction. If you want to adjust this behavior so that Microsoft Word does not convert words in asterisks into bold and words in underscores to italics, go to the Tools menu and select "AutoCorrect...", then select the "AutoFormat As You Type" tab. Then uncheck the box that says "*Bold* and _italic_ with real formatting". If you do this, Microsoft Word will leave your text alone.