Bold Instead of Italics
Italics in print are used for a number of reasons, including listing book and movie titles, foreign words and mathematical variables, and for emphasis. Unfortunately, italic text is often not as clear on the Web, so many editors use bold face, or a combination of bold and italics, where italics alone would be used in print. See the examples below.
Print Formatting
The book Le Petit Prince is considered to be poétique et philosophique in French literary culture (See French Wikipedia: Le Petit Prince).
Web Formatting 1 (Bold)
The book Le Petit Prince is considered to be poétique et philosophique in French literary culture (See French Wikipedia: Le Petit Prince).
Web Formatting 2 (Bold and Italics)
The book Le Petit Prince is considered to be poétique et philosophique in French literary culture (See French Wikipedia: Le Petit Prince).
Bold and Italics in HTML
See the Bold and Italics in HTML page to learn about different strategies to implement bold or italics formatting in HTML.