Introduce <term> element

Looking at HTML5’s definitions of <i> and <b>, and in particular, the 
examples, I notice the following:

> The examples below show uses of the i  element:
>
> <p>The <i>felis silvestris catus</i> is cute.</p>
> <p>The <i>block-level elements</i> are defined above.</p>
> <p>There is a certain <i lang="fr">je ne sais quoi</i> in the air.</p>

and

> The following example shows a use of the b element to highlight key 
> words without marking them up as important:
>
> <p>The <b>frobonitor</b> and <b>barbinator</b> components are fried.</p>

If you look at these examples, they are really all just foreign or 
scientific or other types of terms that are accentuated (using either 
bold or italics) as a means to help the user understand that.

The second example of the <i> element could be covered by the <dfn> 
element. <dfn> means ‘the defining instance of a term’. However, what 
all these examples have in common is that basically, they are all using 
a term without defining it, or want to highlight additional instances of 
the term as well. In other words, <dfn> is too limited to be applied to 
all terms, and thus currently <i> is used instead.

So, in order to fill this gap, I suggest a <term> element is introduced, 
as an accompaniment for <dfn>. This will cover a lot of cases where <i> 
is used and <em> is inappropriate. I think it is generic enough to 
deserve its own element, as opposed to making <i> and <b> catch-all 
elements and defining several overlapping meanings for them.


~Grauw

-- 
Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laurens Holst, student, university of Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Website: www.grauw.nl. Backbase employee; www.backbase.com.