Excerpts from ext.ietf-822: 7-Feb-92 Re: Richtext
henry(_at_)zoo(_dot_)toronto(_dot_)edu (459)
... We could use asterisks for *emphasis* (which might
be conventionally rendered with a bold font)...
Minor quibble: in normal typeset English text, emphasis is conventionally
rendered in italics, and bold is used only for extreme emphasis or for
things like mathematical/programming notations.
Yes, I thought about that. Normal typeset English text generally uses
only normal and italic faces, and stressed words are typically presented
in italics. Often emphasized words are presented in ALL CAPS instead of
resorting to (apparently) non-standard faces like bold. I presume this
all reflects the influence of typewriter technology, where you could
capitalize or underline a word, but that's about all.
We seem in the E-mail community to use *asterisk-quoted words* in a way
that is a bit more specific than English italics, and that's what I was
trying to capture with the use of a bold face.
Bill