I think in practice, people write "Emphasize words like this.", then <left> *, then <C-left><C-left> *. At least I myself usually add markup immediately after writing the words to be marked up.

The problem with Word-like editor styling is exactly that the boundaries are invisible, and the style is applied destructively to everything within highlighted range, instead of non-destructively by the range itself. What I mean is, if in the example above, I want to change the emphasis to only italicize "this", I can kill the first * and place it a word later. In Word-style editing, I'll have to highlight the whole "like " sequence and un-italicize it, hoping I didn't miss a space or a dot that invisibly retains the italics and then screw up editing for you down the line.