Emphasis vs. Italic: Meaning vs. Look

<em> and <i> both render as italic text by default, and they follow the same pattern as <strong> and <b>: <em> means stress emphasis — it actually changes how a sentence should be read — while <i> is a purely visual style with no semantic weight.

<p>I <em>did</em> send the invoice.</p>
<p>The ship was named the <i>Nautilus</i>.</p>

<em> is for the word or phrase a speaker would naturally stress out loud — "I did send the invoice" means something different depending on which word gets the emphasis. <i> is for text set apart by convention, like foreign words, technical terms, or the names of ships and books, where there is no vocal stress implied at all.

<p>The word <i>schadenfreude</i> has no direct English equivalent.</p>

Screen readers can change their tone of voice for <em> text to reflect the added stress, the same way they can for <strong>. <i> text, like <b>, is announced no differently from regular text — it is a look, not a meaning.

Which of these is the correct use of <em>?

Setting a foreign word or a ship's name in italics with no vocal stress implied calls for ____, not <em>.

<em> and <i> always mean exactly the same thing, just with different tag names.