Font Style Elements

Why have the U, STRIKE, and S elements been deprecated, but not B, I, BIG, SMALL, or TT?

In Section 15.2 (Fonts) of the HTML 4.01 Specification, subsection 15.2.1 is titled "Font style elements: the TT, I, B, BIG, SMALL, STRIKE, S, and U elements."  The sentence preceeding this subheading states, "The following HTML elements specify font information.  Although they are not all deprecated, their use is discouraged in favor of style sheets."

While all of these elements can be replaced with rules in style sheets, only the U, STRIKE, and S elements have been deprecated.  Within section 4 (Conformance: requirements and recommendations), the following paragraph exists in the definition for deprecated:

"This specification includes examples that illustrate how to avoid using deprecated elements.  In most cases these depend on user agent support for style sheets.  In general, authors should use style sheets to achieve stylistic and formatting effects rather than HTML presentational attributes.  HTML presentational attributes have been deprecated when style sheet alternatives exist (see, for example, [CSS1])."

Clearly, style sheet alternatives exist for the B, I, BIG, SMALL, and TT elements.  Due to this fact, and the opening sentence for the definition of deprecated, "a deprecated element ... is one that has been outdated by newer constructs," I see no reason for these elements not to be deprecated.  I would greatly appreciate an explanation for the survival of these elements.

Confused and Concerned,
Scott Gonzalez

Received on Thursday, 27 February 2003 00:21:37 UTC