How should we emphasize words in potholed sentences?

tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Cannibalism Superpower

The caption for this page's image is potholed to two tropes; however, the manner in which the "are" is emphasizeed makes it look like it's potholed to three. I've noticed this in other potholed sentences before; wouldn't finding a way to pothole these things save every troper the trouble of checking to what trope each word (if not letter) is potholed, saving a lot more hassle in the long run?

There's no way to use the bold and underline coding in a pothole, unfortunately.

I think you can on Wikipedia.

TV Tropes is not Wikipedia.

If the sentence is written well, then you don't need to make the emphasis explicit by using italics. Readers should be able to know where the emphasis is just by the context, what is said, and the point being made.

I think it's a good thing we can't use the markup in potholes.

In this case, I think the potholing should be like the following, since chained potholes are kind of deprecated nowadays:

Note that I switched the order around.

edited 14th Jan '18 1:22:57 PM by WaterBlap

That also makes more sense with regards to which words are linked. If the words you link don't correspond to the link in any way, you have a Sink Hole.