For AI agents: the complete documentation index is available at https://lazygophers.github.io/pamphlet/en/llms.txt, the full documentation bundle is available at https://lazygophers.github.io/pamphlet/en/llms-full.txt, and this page is available as Markdown at https://lazygophers.github.io/pamphlet/en/write/text/emphasis.md.
Pamphlet
  • English

      • Emphasis

      What it is

      Marking a few words inside a sentence: bold, italic, strikethrough.

      How to write it

      **bold** or __bold__
*italic* or _italic_
***bold italic***
~~strikethrough~~

      What comes out

      • bold → <strong>; screen readers stress it
      • italic → <em>. CJK type has no true italic: browsers slant the square glyphs mechanically, which usually looks wrong — prefer bold in CJK text
      • strikethrough → <del>, for "this is void but the trace stays"

      Strikethrough is a GFM extension (GitHub's set of Markdown extensions), not part of standard Markdown, but both this site and GitHub support it.

      Traps

      • Use asterisks, not underscores, inside a run of non-Latin text. __bold__ requires whitespace or punctuation on both sides; asterisks have no such rule
      • No spaces between the markers and the text: ** bold ** is not bold
      • To emphasise a whole block use a callout; bolding an entire paragraph emphasises nothing