Italic text in output

I have some code on a page that is sending an email to the user once they hit “submit”. In the display of the email, I want a few lines to be shown in italics.
Here is an example of the code:
\r::- ${$w(“#textBox1”).value} //I want this to be italic in the email

This works, except the comment isn’t italic. What should the code look like to make #textbox1 show in the email as italic?
Thanks.

Here is more of the code to see what I’m trying to do.

Then you need to send the email in HTML and wrap that around italic text here