alt Hacker NewsYou were claiming earlier that one shouldn't add formatting to their email, such as emphasizing using italics as it is the recipient who should decide how to format the email text. This is a completely different discussion from whether email that does happen to only require plain text should be sent as plain text or HTML.
I should have expressed myself better. If plaintext is adequate for an e-mail, then it should be plaintext. That's what I suggested. Of course, if you need to use other features, such as the italics you mention, then plaintext doesn't cut it.