Hey you noticed..
But half the reason I use italics and hyphens is to break up the monotony in a long post. I've never been much for the long, unbroken paragraph of data that zones people out after the first few lines. I admit this triple repetition thing, I tried for the first time in this post didn't work out as well as planned. However, in some ways it did work - just not with real positive results.
If I were selling Cola or a religion, I'd be doing good business nevertheless, since attention and/or controversy is all you need for sales of such. But that's not my bag. My bag is the always-free dissemination of personal wisdom/data.
;-)