Comment by omnimus

I am very aware of the formal conventions in print but thats not the problem here. Especially in html those cases should be marked differently (like with span.class) so that can be understood by machine or screenreader.

There can any number things set in italic on page and none of them have to use <em>.

"italic doesn't always mean emphatic" is exactly the reason why i say think of it as emphasis not as italic.

Also emphasis/strong in html is mainly for general emphasis in paragraphs of text. It works pretty much like h1 and h2. The difference is that you have only two levels.