Markdown-Discuss Digest, Vol 26, Issue 22

[Michel Fortin]

Le 2005-12-01 à 10:45, Jon Noring a écrit :


> They have different meanings, though. <span> is intended to be

> generic, while <b> and <i> have non-generic meanings which are obvious

> to all.


`<b>` intent is to mean "bold", just like `<span style="font-weight:  
bold">`, which is only a presentational thing. Sure we all can  
understand the meaning carried by the presentation, but only when put  
in the right context. Bold text could mean anything: is it a header?  
a glossary item? some kind of emphasis?

The role of semantics is to disambiguate such things and "bold"  
doesn't help much. Maybe `<b>` has more meaning than `<span>` because  
bold has a narrower usage that, say, unaltered text. But in my view  
it has absolutely no precise semantic meaning.

It is however a very good fit everywhere the text should be  
gracefully degraded as bold type where CSS isn't supported.


Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/