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> I don't think meant but more so

I guess it was an HTML 4 thing, the standard at the time of Markdown, https://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1

: emphasis.

: stronger emphasis.

I see that HTML 5 has tweaked their descriptions, https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/text-level-semantics....

: stress emphasis

: strong importance, seriousness, or urgency

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Huh, I guess it was.

Anyway, it was all a whole lot of "semantics-washing" anyway; it's lot like people strictly adhere to strong rules of when text should appear bold or in italics anyway.

Agree. It's really missing the point of how this has been used in reality for the sake of promoting semantics in an area where semantics rarely matter.

HTML 4 was not the standard at the time of Markdown. XHTML was.

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