Formatting Description Field

I've been playing around with trying to add formatting into the description (similar to the html formatting you can apply the summary number) but haven't been very successful.

So far I've only been able to bold a block of text (ex. This is *bold* ; results in This is bold)

Using more than two astrisks in the description however does not allow to bold multiple blocks of text. Only the first and last astrisk will be removed and the text between turned bold.

Has anyone else found ways to add formatting to the description field?