Quote:
Originally Posted by DNSB
Yawn! Yes, there is no difference in visual effect unless someone has set emphasized to something other than italic—I've seen bold a few times.
OTOH, if the book is being read aloud, using <em> or <i> can give different results. Even with a human reading a paper book while they would not see the <em> or <i>, they would change their voice. You may even have noted that when reading books to children when, to use the OP's example, you would speak those words with more emphasis and/or volume while <i>USS Henry M. Jackson</i> would not get emphasis or volume.
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Yes, this.
I grant that we can't know the author's intentions as Quoth pointed out, but, if, as in my example, you see a "No! No! No!" you have to assume that it's meant to be emphasized in spoken speech thanks to the exclamation point alone. Are the italics needed there? With the exclamation point in place, not in my opinion, but if the author (or possibly publisher) put them there, I'm generally going to leave them be.
Sometimes it is hard to tell if something is meant to be emphasized or not in spoken speech. Italics could be used to point out a foreign language word, but it's equally possible that the author wanted vocal emphasis on that same word as well.
When in doubt, I read text aloud, to see how it sounds with and without emphasis.
And then do the best I can. Which is what anyone doing the reading for an audiobook or translating a text into another language is also doing. Interpreting. The reader/translator doesn't know the author's exact intent either if the author is dead.
Anyway, I mainly was just curious about the markup, I prefer wrapping a group like this in a single tag, so I'll continue to do that.