(quote) "What's with all those asterisks? "

I've seen them used for *emphasis* on words and told they are more appropriate than "quotation marks"

I'm often frustrated by the way typewritten words are extremely limited in expressing the music of the spoken word. I've often wondered aloud on the web why messageboards don't atleast allow different colorations of the text to try and convey inflections of voice in expanded meaning. This would give new meaning to the term of "colorful speech".

No one has yet composed a universal system of the musical notation of voiced speech .

I'm afraid the use of variations of punctuation hieroglyphs , such as ;-) , don't quite go far enough.