Re: use cases for articles/sections/footer/headers inside figcaption

Looking at this, I'm wondering whether sectioning elements should also be
considered flow elements at all (see:
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/content-models.html#flow-content-0
)

In most cases it is nonsensical and in almost all cases it discloses poor
planning on the part of the author.

I think figcaption > article should be treated as an error in the same way
that span > div is treated as an error.

Putting sectioning elements in flow content elements in the way described
betrays an obvious misunderstanding of logical scale. It would be like
putting a chapter in a chapter section or a book in a chapter.

The only exception I can think of is div > article, wherein the div (a flow
content element) is used as a "helper" (as spec'ed) for layout and must
wrap the article for some reason, perhaps in a situation like div > article
+ section where the article and section are placed in the same non-semantic
"column".

The <div> element has always been used by authors like a "section" (albeit
a non-semantic one) anyway, so I think making this exception is fair. Few
authors writing semantic HTML use divs in the same way that they use
paragraphs, figures, headers, footers etc etc.