Inserting rich text in comment section with "symbol indications"

While adding comments it would be easier to italicize or bold text by putting the desired text between two like character symbols. This could be similar to Google+ where one uses underscores between a sentence or word to italicize it, or use asterisks to bold it.

Reasoning: While typing long replies, it can be tedious to have to stop typing, select and click on the preferred option, or to type a long reply and then search through it to add the formatting.
Also, it would remove the need to add a tool bar in the comments section of a Journal entry as the area provided is already very small and compact.