i'm also dropping by from metafandom, because -- while i do agree with what you're saying about the visual effect of typography -- i am oldskool enough that many of the pre-html conventions are meaningful to me. i have a particular nostalgia for *this*, the most common emphatic typography where i used to hang out, because it allowed for differentiating between *this sort of emphasis* and *this* *sort* *of* *emphasis*. (it was very hard to not put an exclamation point on the end of that, by the way.) i did learn to see italics in /this way/ because the first slash pushes the letters over into the italics slant and the last one keeps them propped up so they don't just all fall over, you see.

additionally, while i don't expect to see these in a finished story any more, i still write in a plain text editor and use *this emphasis* for italics in my drafts; it's easier for me to read than html code when editing.