Python help(): What does straddling an argument with `*` mean?

Question

I encountered the following in an online Python course:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
help(plt.hist)

hist(x, bins=None, range=None, density=None,
weights=None, cumulative=False, bottom=None,
histtype='bar', align='mid', orientation='vertical',
rwidth=None, log=False, color=None, label=None,
stacked=False, normed=None, hold=None, data=None,
**kwargs)

Plot a histogram.

Compute and draw the histogram of *x*. The return value
is a tuple (*n*, *bins*, *patches*) or ([*n0*, *n1*,
...], *bins*, [*patches0*, *patches1*,...]) if the input
contains multiple data.

There are plenty of webpages explaining an asterisk prefix, but Main question: Is straddling with asterisks just an indication of bolding or italicizing the argument name?

On a related note, I use to think of annotations straddling some code as "adornment". However, I haven't been able to clearly corroborate this with web searches. What little I found seems to indicate that adornment refers to adding code to code in a more complicated ways than simple straddling. Secondary question: What is the commonly accepted definition of adornment?

Answer 1

That is markdown markup language. *text* is text, and **bold** is bold.

This is a popular reference for how to use markdown. It doesn't produce any styling in the console, but it implies emphasis.

Edit: For your second question, a quick Google search revealed:

a thing that adorns or decorates, an ornament.

So basically, just a decoration. You could consider a comment a sort of decoration in your code, I guess, although when talking about comments, I would just use their traditional name to avoid confusion.

Answer 2

Is straddling with asterisks just an indication of bolding or italicizing the argument name?

Yes, it is. Using asterisk (*) to surround a word is a common convention for italicisation / emphasis. Including, at the time of writing, the StackOverflow text editor. This is not valid Python syntax.

The only part of the documentation extracted via help where asterisks are important is the function definition:

hist(..., **kwargs)

See What does ** (double star/asterisk) and * (star/asterisk) do for parameters? for an explanation of what asterisks mean in this context.

"Adornment" as far as I'm aware is not a Python concept.