They're used to stress

Usage examples of italics.

This eBook was produced by Col Choat Notes: Italics in the book have been capitalised in the eBook.

In all experiments cited in this chapter the italics are not in the original descriptions.

Italics and diacritical marks such as accents and cedillas are omitted and unmarked.

It is worth studying (all italics are his): With the transition to the sociocultural form of life, that is, with the introduction of the family structure [during preoperational/magic], there arose the problem of demarcating [beginning to differentiate] society from external nature.

Back in Kyohvic—“Misty Harbor,” as the helpful stab-in-the-dark translation says in squiggly italics on the sky-port sign, dittoed below in the barred neon of chi-chi Ogham—Matt Cairns shoulders his duffel bag and heads through the concourse for the shuttle train to town.

But then she had been thinking for years like a newspaper -- in headlines, sub-heads, bold roman, italics and, of course, pictures artfully arranged upon the page, bigger and bigger pictures as reproductions luckily improved at the same rate that people were able to read less and less text.

Added italics (indicated by _ in original), full proof, 10 OCR errors corrected, some layout changes, added linefeeds to indicate some scene changes, conversion to HTML.

I not only had no publisher, I had to pay back the book advance I had originally gotten from HarperCollins (owned by right-wing media magnate Rupert Murdoch, pretty much proving Al Franken's theory of a conservative media bias - italics added to indicate sarcasm, All).

Badly scanned & previously released as a raw plain text output by unknown asshole (missing/doublescanned pages, no italics, lots of errors).