Emphasis or Italic?

[Anton J Aylward]

Jon Noring wrote:

>>What's the difference between:

>>

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

>>and

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


....


> 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?


That's a good point.
Especially of the text-to-speech software is a screen-scraper rather than a
HTML-reader.

I wish I could remember the source: I once heard on the radio a poem "fifty
ways to pronounce the letter 'O'".  It ranged from surprise, though
despondency to orgasmic.  It was a sound poem.  In text it would have been

   Oh!
   Oh!
   Oh!
   .....

Since _every_ one of the Ohs held emphasis - of some kind - it makes me
wonder ... can ANY text-to-speech converter replicate something like that?
  "Emphasis"  --  what emphasis.  And of course some of them will be louder
(i.e. stronger) than others....

Oh.  Right.

I've a mind to remove <em> and <strong> and put something in that will mean
<bold><italic>.  Visually that is useful.

/anton -- I'm not deaf, I'm ignoring you while I read this ...