On Apr 23, 2005, at 6:23pm, Brion Vibber wrote:
It's not just <em> and <strong>.
<em> and <strong> are listed in the standard[1] along with other
semantic elements like <dfn>, <code>, <samp>, <kbd>, <var>,
<cite>,
<abbr>, and <acronym>...
<i> and <b> are listed[2] with other purely typographic elements like
<tt>, <big>, <small>, <strike>, <s>, and <u>.
Many of the elements in the first group do have unique meanings.
However, the i/em, b/strong are synonymous in their traditional usage.
You italicize and bold text because you want to emphasize it or
strongly emphasize it. Reasons for i vs. em, such as that taxonomic
names or foreign words are customarily italicized and blah blah blah,
ignore the fact that the reason they are customarily italicized is to
emphasize them.
It would seem that they merely duplicated them, with different names,
in each group because they couldn't decide what group they belonged in
but there is no real reason to choose one over the other because the
semantics are really identical and the semantic/typographic distinction
is purely artificial. It's no wonder that, "people can't be educated to
understand the difference."
John Blumel