curiousv:
Do you find italics and bold in novels? In real books of literature, printed on paper?
It might be that a whole 500-page novel could realistically use special script for a sentence or two in total, but on this site it would be abused so much, that maybe it's better this way.
There's a hilarious note on use of italics in the prologue to one of my favourite books accusing readers of being blasé.
I wonder if it's a modern literature thing that it's fallen out of favour with modern tastes. The exception to that would be poetry which I would argue uses more italics and bold than it used to due to the partially visual nature of some modern poems.
Agreed though: on this sight, they are used too much.