b and i

[John Gruber]

Lou Quillio <public at quillio.com> wrote on 05/14/04 at 9:16pm:

> As to whether bold and italics are inherently presentational and have 
> no place in semantic XHTML, I'll submit the example of <br />.  By a 
> certain logic, <br /> is purely presentational as well, and doesn't do 
> anything that styled paragraphs can't.  Until you want to write poetry.

I'd argue that `br` is not merely presentational. It can be used
for purely presentational purposes, but it can also be used as a
sort of punctuation.

The name "break" implies what the semantic meaning is.

Admittedly `br` is a bit unique, but I wouldn't lump it with `i`
and `b`.

-J.G.