Update: I had given a wrong example of the cite element. It is corrected now.
There are several ways to quote/emphasise using HTML, you can use the <q>, <blockquote>, <cite>, <em>, <strong>, <pre>, <code> and there are subscripts <sub> and superscripts <sup>.
Mike Davidson has written about his design signature which has inspired me to write about the elements of my web design signature. As he had mentioned, it seems following my signature leads to no or negligible use for IE specific style sheets.
Update: There is another informative article on getting cross-browser compatibility every time.