<i> indicates that something is italic in its presentation. <em> indicates that something is emphasized and nothing more -- it may or may not be italicized in

<i> indicates that something is italic in its presentation. <em> indicates that something is emphasized and nothing more -- it may or may not be italicized in its presentation. The trend for HTML/XHTML is away from markup that denotes the presentation of something and toward markup that denotes the meaning. In i/em matters it's a pedantic discussion, but in recent standards, tags like <font> and <center> are removed entirely.