Emphasis or Italic?

[Jon Noring]

> What's the difference between:

>

>   <em>emphasis</em>   and <i>italicized</i>

> and

>   <strong>strong</strong>  and <b>bold</b>


First, they are all elements in the XHTML namespace.

Second, <em> and <strong> mean emphasis, while <i> and <b> are
intended to say "in visual presentation, make this italic or bold".

That's all!



> It seems to subtle for my browsers.

> The only "difference" I've been able to find is that according to the

> O'Reilly book <strong> and <emphasis> are semantic tags, while <b> and <i>

> are physical, but, most browsers render them the same way (unless you've

> played subtle games with CSS).

>

> _Are_ there any browsers that render them differently?


Don't know. It depends upon the default style sheet used by browsers.
The CSS 2.1 default style sheet styles <em> and <i> with italics, and
<strong> and <b> in bold. For all the visual browsers, both old and
new that I know of, they default the same way in visual presentation.

From a visual presentation viewpoint they lead to the same end-result
for nearly all browsers I know. But from a text semantic perspective,
they are quite different.

This begs the interesting rhetorical question: in non-visual
presentation, such as text-to-speech, how should <i> and <b> be aurally
rendered to the listener?

<smile/>

Jon Noring