Thanks, Faiza!

Most of the time, that's true.

My personal preference is to exclude optional fields altogether.

Even so, I try not to take anything for granted. For example, what if it's a long form and the user walks away from their computer? What if the user is elderly and doesn't use a computer that often?

I don't want the user to have to attempt a form submission only to find out that certain fields are required. I'm not counting on the conventions (such as using an asterisk), because doing so assumes the user is familiar with them.

My goal is to make the process as easy for the user as possible. Please take a look at the following article where I discuss my approach: https://medium.com/user-experience-design-1/ux-insulting-the-users-intelligence-passive-aggressively-690bebf79757

Anyway, thanks again!