uppercase and small caps: this may be useful and nice for Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Armenian, but other  writing systems don't have it. Depending on it for adding elegance or for emphasis is not a good idea.

That's a very interesting problem you bring up.. As far as I can see, we need inline styling for two different cases:

- To add emphasis. In my opinion, italics would be the best option here. They don't interrupt the reading experience as bold set words do.

- To mark links. Underlining is obviously the standard way to go here, but considering your arguments, a different solution might be better here. I could imagine changing the text color (which would need to be tested to be accessible for people with sight problems) or adding a colored background.

Did I miss anything here?

best, max
@awesomephant

ps: hi. I'm the new kid on the block.