Way back in the day when I was on IRC, I usually read them as,
*bold*
/italics/
_underline_
… which would have made sense, if you stop to think about the characters. (But of course humans are wibbly-wobbly in what they'll choose, so context is context.) Alas, bold is now different in everything, it seems, and I can never remember which is which, aside from Discord which gives visual feedback.
The worst part of the <i> to <em> migration is now <em> often gets used for book titles, which is completely wrong. Book titles aren’t emphasized, they’re italicized.
If someone hits control+I, or an italics button, it should use <i> tags, not <em>.
