emphasize

Emphasize is a verb meaning to give special importance or prominence to something. It can mean to stress, highlight, or foreground an aspect, idea, or term. The related noun is emphasis. The term is used across language, writing, speech, and communication to indicate that a feature deserves attention.

In spoken language, emphasis is realized by stress on a syllable or word, often accompanied by higher pitch, longer duration, or greater volume. In many languages, the position and presence of emphasis can affect meaning or grammatical function, such as distinguishing a noun from a verb in certain word pairs.

In writing and typography, emphasis is conveyed with devices such as italics, boldface, underline, quotation marks, or capitalization. Markup languages provide semantic tags (for example, emphasis or strong) so screen readers and other assistive technologies can recognize important text.

In rhetoric and pedagogy, emphasis helps control attention, clarify arguments, and highlight key concepts. Editors and designers apply emphasis judiciously to preserve its impact; overuse can reduce readability or mislead the audience. Effective emphasis supports comprehension without altering the underlying information.