I prefer text email in theory. It's cleaner, simpler. Text for messages, that's how the web was meant to work, right?

I also cringe when I purple text in Comic Sans, as well as other unmentionables.

Yet, when I want to emphasize something, I hate using asterisks. It's not semantically correct, and it looks ugly. And how do you differentiate between underline and italics?

For this reason I support HTML email.