Best format for emphasis

If one wants to emphasize a word or phrase, which format is best: bolding, italics, or underline?

WRS

It’s really a matter of personal style. Me, I always use the old-school bold markers. It’s really cool.

Which strikes you hardest among these choices?

You could do what I did earlier tonight and try to open the emphasis with one kind of tag and close it with another.

'Cause that works real well.

For most purposes, I prefer italics.

None of the above!

Italics get lost in the QUOTE feature.

A good point. Also, some of us tiny-type-hatin’ old geezers scroll the fonts larger, to the point where they jump into bold all over, so that form of emphasis gets lost too.

You can always type in ALL CAPS TOO.

So that’s how you get round it. I’m another tiny- type hater but I never considered the scroll wheel thingy.

Blood…I am very wary of any notes that I receive that have been written with blood, human blood.

Embedding spyware within the body of the post will make folks sit up and notice!

The problem with underlining is that it makes it look as though the word is a link.

Yeh, I recently discovered it and it’s a big help. You have to hold down the Control button while you do it. Scrolling toward you enlarges; scrolling away diminishes.

twickster, I agree with you on the underlining.

Color can be helpful.

Not on my screen. The italics show up perfectly, but the bolding looks exactly like the regular font.

Happy Lendervedder came close. One should accentuate one’s point like this, or possibly like this, or in dire circumstances like this, using a cascading effect to emphasize the relative importance of the words one is choosing.

And just how long did it take to type that?

Weird.

I’m using Netscape, you?

“Weird. I’m using” is in italics. “Netscape” is bolded. "you?’ is neither.

I’m using good ol’ IE 6.0.

!!!

Learn something new every day!

Italics are the proper typographical choice. Underlines are sort of a “poor man’s italics” - they exist as a substitute for italics when they are not available (as on typewriters). They are more distracting and break up the flow of text, drawing the eye even when you’re reading a different line of the paragraph. Plus, on the web, they stand for links (for those poor folks who haven’t turned off link underlining, anyway.) Underlining is straight out. Italics are also used for unfamiliar foreign words (but those that are common in English are not normally italicized) and for titles of books and films.

Bold is not used for normal emphatic text in typography, and further here on the SDMB we use it to set off usernames, so I think it would be visually confusing to use it for emphasis.