The website conflates emphasis with italic and bold

[DominoPivot]

The quick reference and the tutorial on commonmark.org says that asterisks or underscores are used for italic and bold, terms that are never used in the specification.

Both the CommonMark spec and the original Markdown description indicate that such syntax is for emphasis and strong emphasis, and imply that they are equivalent to <em> and <strong>. This aligns with older HTML specifications and terminology, and whether the CommonMark specification should be updated to more closely match HTML: The Living Standard is a separate issue better discussed on the commonmark-spec repository or forums.

But at the very least, I believe the quick reference and tutorial should match the specification, and not have *Italic* and **Bold** as examples.

[DominoPivot]

Unrelated but poignant: While filing this issue I noticed that Github stripped the <cite> element from my Markdown, despite not being forbidden by the GFM specification.