Hi Jim, the philosophical discussion of what emphasis is or what is contrastive is quite futile, here. Since, you are so found of history. I believe the \ephm command in TeX advents HTML. regards Keith Am 14.10.2011 um 01:15 schrieb Jim Adcock:
ALLOW, me to explain THAT Upper Case can be used for emphasis, yet it requires no mark up! YET, emphasis need not always have to be mark up as italic. _Also, the use of underscore can be used for other stylistic means. _Yet, semantics and style vary from author to author.
I think if one goes back to typographic usage in previous centuries one finds that use of italic vs. non-italic is intended as *contrastive* not *emphasis* -- that the notion of "*emphasis*" is yet-another html design mistake. For example a brief non-italic section might be found within an italic section to show *contrast* -- it certainly wasn't intended that the non-italic section be UN-"emphasized" -- nor was the long-italic section intended to imply the entire section was to be *emphasized* -- rather the long italic section was simply intended to be *contrastive.* Sometimes when contrast was printed it *was* intended to be read as emphasis, but that reading is supplied in context by the reader not by the typography. As often the italic is simply intended to represent *some* kind of *difference.* Only recently have we found the desire of writers to make everything explicitly *emphatic* for the "sake of the reader" -- with html unfortunately only too happy to oblige!