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Font-awesome also does this, I've always found it strange but assumed it was done for some reason.



Their documentation says:

We like the <i> tag for brevity and for the fact that most folks are using <em></em> for emphasized/italicized semantic text these days. If that’s not your cup of tea, using a <span> is more semantically correct.

https://fontawesome.com/how-to-use/on-the-web/referencing-ic...


The i and the b tag are now superfluous as the em and strong tag has taken over their semantic meaning.

This frees their use for other things.


Actually, all elements still have kinda distinct uses:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/i

> represents a range of text that is set off from the normal text for some reason. Some examples include technical terms, foreign language phrases, or fictional character thoughts. It is typically displayed in italic type.

Typically, but doesn't have to be. It's just about stuff that's set off, but not necessarily more or less important, "just different" I would say.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/em

> marks text that has stress emphasis. can be nested, with each level of nesting indicating a greater degree of emphasis.

Oh, I did not know it can be nested. At any rate, emphasis doesn't have to be bold, it can be anything that gets emphasis across.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/b

> is used to draw the reader's attention to the element's contents, which are not otherwise granted special importance. [..] However, you should not use <b> for styling text; instead, you should use the CSS font-weight property to create boldface text, or the <strong> element to indicate that text is of special importance.

Okay, to be perfectly honest, I can't think of a good example for something I would want to draw attention to without considering it more important. Maybe the names of persons in a news story? Hmmm. I don't know, but notice making something blink is a perfect and sensible way to draw attention to it... so the blink tag never went away, it just got shorter, so we can use it more liberally.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/st...

> The HTML Strong Importance Element (<strong>) indicates that its contents have strong importance, seriousness, or urgency.

So basically, this means flashing text in various bright colors while changing size rapidly. I know how to read standards, so nobody even pretend it could be otherwise; let's just fix our websites accordingly. A "call to action" with a big green button is way too tame, if it doesn't trigger a primal survival reaction, you might lose the client.




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