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Emphasis is provided by using italics, used for key words, stage directions and the names of characters, and capitalization of key words. There are many designs. With both italics and boldface, the emphasis is correctly achieved by swapping into a different font of the same family; for example by replacing body text in Arial with its bold or ...
Italics markup is for non-emphasis purposes, such as for book titles and non-English language phrases, as detailed below. Emphasis may be used to draw attention to an important word or phrase within a sentence, when the point or thrust of the sentence may otherwise not be apparent to readers, or to stress a contrast:
The evolution of use of italic to show emphasis happened in the sixteenth century and was a clear norm by the seventeenth. The trend of presenting types as matching in typefounders' specimens developed also over this period. [25] Italics developed stylistically over the following centuries, tracking changing tastes in calligraphy and type design.
Generally preserve bold and italics (see § Italics), but most other styling should be altered. Underlining, spac ing within words, co lor s, ALL CAPS, small caps, etc. should generally be normalized to plain text. If it clearly indicates emphasis, use italic emphasis ({}) or, in an already-italic passage, boldface (with {}).
Italics for emphasis Italics may be used sparingly to emphasize words in sentences; boldface is normally not used for this purpose. Generally, the more highlighting, the less effective it is.
Bold text is stylistically offset from other text without conveying extra importance. The most common use of boldface is to highlight the article title, and often synonyms, in the lead section. Do not use bold text for emphasis. Use ''' to open and close bold text.
Chicago Manual of Style, 15th ed., 7.49: Italics for emphasis. Good writers use italics for emphasis only as an occasional adjunct to efficient sentence structure. Overused, italics quickly lose their force. Seldom should as much as a sentence be italicized for emphasis, and never a whole passage.
The question of italics for titles of major works in non-Latin scripts has come up before, for example Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Text formatting/Archive 6#More clarity may be needed re titles of works in foreign languages, a discussion that concluded 20 June 2018.