Emphasis styling allows you to highlight key terms, indicate deletions, or call attention to critical instructions. Markdown provides clean symbols that map directly to semantic HTML formatting tags.

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1. Bold Text (Strong Emphasis / <strong>)

To make text bold, surround it with two asterisks (`)** or **two underscores (__`)**:

• HTML Output: <strong>very important</strong>
• Best Practice: Prefer double asterisks (**) because underscores inside words (like user_profile_name) can occasionally cause ambiguity in some parsers.

2. Italic Text (Emphasis / <em>)

To italicize text, surround it with a *single asterisk (`)** or **single underscore (_`)**:

• HTML Output: <em>italicized</em>

3. Combining Bold and Italic (Bold-Italic)

To make text simultaneously bold and italic, surround it with three asterisks (``)*:

• HTML Output: <strong><em>critically important and emphasized</em></strong>

4. Strikethrough (GFM Extension / <del>)

In GitHub Flavored Markdown, surround text with double tildes (~~) to show crossed-out or deprecated content:

• Rendered Output: <del>Deprecated: Use API v1</del>
• HTML Output: <del>Deprecated: Use API v1</del>

5. Highlights, Subscripts & Superscripts (Extended Markdown)

In extended flavors like Markdown Extra, Obsidian, and Pandoc:

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What syntax is used to create bold text in standard Markdown?

A. bold B. bold C. ~bold~ D. #bold# Answer: B Explanation: Surrounding text with double asterisks (e.g. bold) renders bold text corresponding to the HTML <strong> element.

2. Which HTML element is typically generated when you apply single asterisks (italic) in Markdown?

A. <b> B. <em> C. <mark> D. <small> Answer: B Explanation: Single asterisks map semantically to the HTML <em> (emphasis) element.

3. How do you apply both bold and italic formatting simultaneously to a word?

A. Surround with three asterisks (*word) B. Surround with four hashes (####word####) C. Use brackets ([word]) D. Repeat the word twice Answer: A Explanation:* Three asterisks combine bold (2) and italic (1) to generate <strong><em>word</em></strong>.

4. What is the GFM syntax for strikethrough text?

A. --text-- B. text C. text D. __text__ Answer: B Explanation: Double tildes (text) are used in GitHub Flavored Markdown to render strikethrough text.

5. Why is 'bold' generally preferred over '__bold__' by technical writers?

A. Asterisks render in red color B. Underscores can clash with variable names containing underscores (such as snake_case_variables) C. Asterisks compile 10 times faster D. Underscores are not allowed on the internet Answer: B Explanation: Using asterisks prevents parsing conflicts when dealing with snake_case programming identifiers and file paths.