Earlier quoted context omitted.
The hope for semantic HTML died the day they said "stop using , use ", regardless of what the actual purpose of the italics was (it's usually not emphasis).
Who said that? The semantics are different. The HTML element represents a range of text that is set off from the normal text for some reason, such as idiomatic text, technical terms, taxonomical designations, among others. Historically, these have been presented using italicized type, which is the original source of the naming of this element. The element is for words that have a stressed emphasis compared to surroun…
Unfortunately, a lot of people who missed the point entirely.
(We can, however, still disagree with the commenter that this "killed" semantic HTML. Fond of overstating things a bit?)