On Apr 23, 2005, at 7:12 PM, John Blumel wrote:
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.
I think you're missing the point, John. The way I've found it easiest
to describe to some people is voice inflection. If you were speaking a
sentence out loud, would you speak certain words differently? Those
are the words that would apply to the "em" or "strong" tags.
But the generic "i" tag refers to nothing more than instructing a
visual-based user agent to render said text in italics. Any other
meaning is only derived based on a human reader's assumptions based on
the context.
For example, any of the various tags would generally be rendered in
italics: "cite", "var", "dfn" (for example). But if you
always used
the "i" tag, how would a context-less reader know whether the
italicized text was supposed to be a title, a variable, a definition,
or emphasized text? THAT is why the "em" tag is important.
(I will admit that I see a bit less difference between the "b" and
"strong" tags, but seeing as how there's a semantic difference between
"i" and "em", it's reasonable (IMO) to accept a difference between
"b"
and "strong" as well. And although I do sometimes use the "i" tag,
I've found that I never use the "b" tag anymore. But that's just my
personal style, I'm guessing.
Hope this helps explain (my perspective on) things for you!
Dan