Encoding italic (was: A last missing link)

[James Kass via Unicode]

I wrote,

 > The VS possibility would double the character count of any strings
 > including them.

A kind list member has pointed out privately that the above is 
mistaken.  Twitter character counts aren't actually character counts.  
Each math-alpha counts as two characters as do the VS characters.  So a 
string with VS characters interspersed would actually be triple rather 
than double.

(I've also been advised that a lot of the math-alpha on Twitter involves 
fraktur, script, and double struck characters.  As was pointed out to 
me, that practice would probably continue even if Twitter enabled italic 
and bold styling as a feature.  Again, I do not personally know how 
widespread the practice is.)