Techniques are described for automatically analyzing received values to determine their semantic meaning and apply one or more formatting modifications and/or emphases to the received values based on the determined semantic meaning. In one example, a value to be formatted based on a semantic context associated with at least two portions of the received value is received. In response, a semantic rules associated with the received value is identified. The received value is semantically processed using the semantic rules, where processing includes identifying at least two portions of the value corresponding to their contexts. At least one formatting rule is determined as associated with the two or more semantic contexts, each formatting rule associated with a particular context. The formatting rules are applied to the corresponding portions of the received values associated their semantic contexts to generate a modified version of the received value, which is then provided for presentation.