The emphasis (<em>) element is used to give emphasis to its contents. The following definition describes the appropriate use of this element:
…one principle is easy to state: linguistic or rhetorical emphasis should be distinguished carefully from decorative highlighting… By linguistic or rhetorical emphasis, we mean emphasis which serves a function in conveying the meaning of a sentence, by suggesting a contrast, giving weight to a certain word, or representing the expressive rhythms of speech.
Women Writers Project Guide to Scholarly Text Encoding Brown University Womens Writer Project. Brown Univesity. 2007
Note: The <em> element is expected be part of the new emphasis domain in the DITA 2.0 specification §10.6.3.1.
The <em> element is specialized from <ph>. It is defined in the highlighting-domain module.
- topic/ph hi-d/em
The following attributes are available on this element: universal attributes, @outputclass, and @keyref.
You should <em>not</em> press the return key before all fields are completed.
Example output:
You should not press the return key before all fields are completed.
Note: This element's contents may be rendered differently depending on the localization. The standard at Bentley is to render E. Asian text as bold and/or underline, where as other text is italicized.
- A More Semantic Way of Describing Emphasized Inline Content in DITA 2.0
- Eberlein, Kristin James. DITA 2.0 A NOT backwards compatible release. June 15, 2021 - Slide 32
- <em>: The Emphasis element