> Do not confuse the <b> element with the <strong>, <em>, or <mark> elements. The <strong> element represents text of certain importance, <em> puts some emphasis on the text and the <mark> element represents text of certain relevance. The <b> element doesn't convey such special semantic information; use it only when no others fit.
It's hard not to read this as satire. All I want is for my text to be bold, dammit!
I always found the deprecation of the <b> element to be one of the most pedantic arguments.
The given option to either swap the tag for something more descriptive or move it to CSS are contradictory. (I understand not wanting to rely on it for header information).
I just want to make the text bold, dangit. I am not writing an essay about how the text is feeling.
The suggested replacements, <em> and <strong>, also define content's appearance and already have robust screen readers support. There's no practical reason <b> needs to be any different.
Suppose you want to bold something for stylistic reasons. <strong> isn't right, because the boldness isn't really for a strong emphasis, and you don't really want a screen reader to treat it differently.
You could use <span class="bold"> or <span style="font-face: bold;">, but that's just a more verbose version of <b>.
> Suppose you want to bold something for stylistic reasons.
The whole point of the article is that you should use css for style and html for structure and semantics. Don't use markup for style. Have separate css file for that.
If you don't care or understand why that makes sense, just use bold.
But it is unavoidable to have to use markup for style.
You have to use some markup to indicate the span that needs to be bold. Yes, you could use a <span> instead, but that is still using html for style, and conveys less about the purpose of the tag.
Can’t we just admit that the default stylesheet will always render <b> as bold, and that if you want to make it mean something else through CSS, then knock yourself out? This torture of the language has got to stop.
I just continue to be upset that they made <strong> five characters long :/. Why couldn't they have gone with <s>? (And <e> instead of <em>, though that's a lot less problematic.)
I use <strong> all over the place--though, after I was recently pointed at some of the new retconned HTML5 documentation, I did now wonder if some of my uses "should be" <b>; but, now I see the notes about <mark>, and I probably was wanting that one?...--and it makes HTML really annoying as a "markup" language as it causes massive discontinuities in the text I am reading/editing just to add some better inflection.
It's hard not to read this as satire. All I want is for my text to be bold, dammit!