Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com writes:
<span>'s only theoretical value is in creating semantically meaningful pseudo-tags via class specifications, something which is only useful if you also control the global style sheet.
Even withot control users can override upstream settings using "!important" (IIRC). Some believe in semantic markup, others do not.
Unfortunately, the WP suffers by the re-inventing wheels syndrom (instead of switching to XML/SGML now).