How to properly emphasise words with italics in sentences?

Solution 1:

Which word you emphasize depends on what you are trying to say.

"So what can you do?" puts the emphasis on the other person's ability or lack of ability. Like if you got a new assistant, and you assigned him some task and he did it very badly, and so you assigned him another task and he did that very badly also, you might plaintively ask, "So what can you do?"

"So what can you do?" puts the emphasis on the other person as an individual. If several other people have just volunteered to perform whatever tasks and one person is sitting there doing nothing, you might ask him, "So what can you do?"

Update After Reading JR

Good point, let's consider all possible emphases. In context each might have other meanings, but obvious interpretations of emphasizing each of the remaining three words are:

"So what can you do?" Given what has gone before, what can you do now.

"So what can you do?" Of the possible tasks that someone might be capable of, which are you able to do? (This might mean of all possibl tasks in the world, or of all tasks that need to be done right now.) Pretty similar to emphasizing "can", I think.

"So what can you do?" What are you capable of actually performing, as opposed to just talking about it.

Solution 2:

If the emphasis seems like it's on the wrong word, there's a good chance that's why the italics were used in the first place. In the sentence

So what can you do?

the emphasis can be put in a number of places (I can think of four, although there may be five). That said, the objective is not to put the emphasis where the sentence packs the most punch, but to put it where it most closely conveys the author's intended point of emphasis (or, in the case of a direct quotation, where the speaker put the most emphasis in the original).

Put another way, I'm more likely use italics when the emphasis is found where it's least expected. If the italicized emphasis is located where it seems most natural, then there isn't such a need to use the italics. (Otherwise, we'd be emphasizing a word in every sentence and clause, to the point where it would be ridiculous!)