I also had similar ideas. Note, however, that doing styling on the browser side under user control is already possible (although due to how CSS works, it doesn'

I also had similar ideas. Note, however, that doing styling on the browser side under user control is already possible (although due to how CSS works, it doesn't work in the ideal way). Furthermore, what you mention is a subset of existing specifications and can be done easily if you are writing the web page. (I generally do this too when writing my own web pages, although often I will just write plain text instead anyways.) However, there are some features missing from HTML unfortunately; I had a different idea for how icons should have been displayed instead (I posted before on Hacker News), and that there should be a special tag for footnotes, but there isn't. Still, it is probably good enough.