It’s nice for small-context stuff, but it depends on the editor context as well. Hitting cmd-I to turn italics on and off is no more difficult than typing * at

It’s nice for small-context stuff, but it depends on the editor context as well. Hitting cmd-I to turn italics on and off is no more difficult than typing * at the beginning and the end. And then there’s the fact that the verbatim equivalent doesn't provide a way to be able to easily have ` as an in-line verbatim. Word is nice because it’s designed for writing which most text editors are not.