For the generation of QUIPs, we (at marketing's request) use styling provided by PlanetQt (git repo).
That includes a planetqt/website/online.css which opens with an obfuscated long line that hits a large number of standard HTML elements with a common style, obliterating the meaning of all of those element types.

html,body,div,span,applet,object,iframe,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,blockquote,pre,a,abbr,acronym,address,big,cite,code,del,dfn,em,img,ins,kbd,q,s,samp,small,strike,strong,sub,sup,tt,var,b,u,i,center,dl,dt,dd,ol,ul,li,fieldset,form,label,legend,table,caption,tbody,tfoot,thead,tr,th,td,article,aside,canvas,details,embed,figure,figcaption,footer,header,hgroup,menu,nav,output,ruby,section,summary,time,mark,audio,video{border:0;font-size:100%;font:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;margin:0;padding:0}article,aside,details,figcaption,figure,footer,header,hgroup,menu,nav,section{display:block}body{line-height:1}ol,ul{list-style:none}blockquote,q{quotes:none}blockquote:before,blockquote:after,q:before,q:after{content:none}table{border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:0}html{font-family:sans-serif;-ms-text-size-adjust:100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust:100%;}

(I note, in passing, that this monstrously ugly way to write CSS is unnecessary and delivers no benefit at all.)
In amongst the elements thus obliterated are em and strong.

In the QUIP process, we use reStructuredText to generate standard HTML, which naturally uses these standard types of elements.
Which means that if the author of a QUIP attempts to use standard reStructuredText mark-up, such as wrapping text in single stars to give emphasis or double stars for strong emphasis, it simply doesn't work.

I shall address this by brute force in the meta/quips repository if I must (by departing from PlanetQt styling) but it's just A Bad Thing To Do in styling to begin with.
Please reconsider this poor choice.