[Izkata]

> Whereas a perfectly-spec'd markup language would probably evolve toward an unreadable-to-humans mess in the committee-driven pursuit of precision.

This proposal shows us a clear step in that direction, going from something simple and easy for humans to understand, with complex implementation, to emphasize part of a word:

  fan*tas*tic

To proposing a simple implementation that's... weird for humans:

  fan~_tas_~tic

[avgcorrection]

It seems like a minor concession since most uses of intra-word emphasis are more cutesy than communicative[1] (it is of course sometimes very useful when there is a subtle syllable emphasis, or a suble typo that you want to point out).

[1] Maybe I’m being a hypocrite here? I definitely am in favor of a lot of “cutesy” ways to communicate (things that are more stylistic than necessary). But not intra-word emphasis, really.