On 2/11/07 (12:36) Tom said:
>Another question though... do you have an example of proper, semantic
>use of <strong> vs <b>? Is it just just a tag to allow you to style
>your own visual emphasis? How about <strong> vs. <em> - what's the
>semantic difference?
Don't have any convenient links to send you, Tom, but let me see if I
can give a verbal example.
When you say "just a tag to allow you to style your own visual
emphasis", then THAT is when you should use a <b> or <i>. An example
might be a foreign language word -- traditionally styled in italics. The
word (probably) does not require any semantic emphasis per se -- ie. you
are not giving it any enhanced meaning -- and so you would not use the
<em> tag but you DO want to give it a visual-only enhancement to make it
render in italics.
The key here is that a device that reads your page by looking at the
code (eg a screen reader or a search engine) should *not* be led to
infer that the word has been emphasised -- because it hasn't, it's just
been italicised so that devices that read the page by looking at the
rendered version (eg. our eyes) can make assumptions based upon our
cultural context ("hmm... words in italics are often plucked from
another language").
And I'm starting to get overly-wordy here, sorry.
Of course, if there was a tag for 'foreign language word' then the best
choice (for the example above) would be to use that -- but there isn't.
Perhaps the most semantic solution in the above example would be to wrap
the word in a span with a class assigned, like so:
HTML:
<p> We say "yes", but the French say <span class="foreignWord">"Oui"</
span></p>
CSS:
.foreignWord {font-style: italic;}
Lastly: <strong> is a more emphatic version of <em>. As I understand it.
And the above guidelines would apply equally to the bold/strong debate.
Rule of thumb: think to yourself, regardless of how it *looks* on the
screen, what does the text I'm marking up *mean*?
If I'm off base here I'm sure others will correct me.
Best regards;
--
Rick Lecoat
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