VS 2013 / Inline HTML Formatting With Razor?

I have this razor code ...

Code:
<ul>
<li>
@("hello <i>world</i>")
</li>
<li>
hello <i>world</i>
</li>
</ul>

When I run it the italic attribute works on the second item, but not on the first. I'm guessing it doesn't work because it's being passed as a literal string and the html formatting is lost.

How can this be made to work?

The reason I ask is because in my project, the text for the list item is stored in a database and I want the ability to include formatting for the item at the database level.

Code:
@Html.Raw("hello <i>world</i>")

However, I am not getting the result I need, so here is a bit more code....

Code:
@helper addNodes(dcNode As DocumentContent)
@<li id=@dcNode.Id>
@dcNode.nodeTitle <--This results in "White Papers - <i>New</i>"
@Html.Raw(dcNode.nodeTitle) <--The truncates the string at the tag and results in "White Papers -"
@If dcNode.children.Count > 0 Then
@For Each childNode As DocumentContent In dcNode.children.Values
@<ul id=@dcNode.nodeTitle>@addNodes(childNode)</ul>
Next
End If
</li>
End Helper

This is a recursive helper that populates node for a jsTree and works fine, but the inline html is not working. Here is what the result looks like.

The text for each li is shown twice because I am showing it once without and once with HTML.RAW. Notice the "White Paper" item... the second text is truncate at the <i> tag.Why is this and how can I fix it?