Re: using strong to indicate a title?

Ian Devlin, Tue, 7 May 2013 17:45:00 +0200:
> The purpose of <small> is not to demote, the specification doesn't say that
> at all:
> 
http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/WD-html5-20110525/text-level-semantics.html#the-small-element

> 
> It even goes as far as saying that it does not demote the importance of
> elements within <small> that are marked up with <strong> and/or <em> and
> that if you wish to mark the contents of a <small> as important it should
> be wrapoed in <strong>. This implies that <small> itself has no effect on
> the importance of its content.

You are right. That was an unlucky choice of wording. But visually it 
does demote - as it makes the text smaller. I would say that it is an 
advantage that the 'demoting' is only visual and not semantic, because, 
when the full heading - with subtitle and all - is supposed to go into 
the outline, the I’d argue that there is no demoting going on. Hence, 
despite that unlucky wording, I stand by my point.

If one place the subtitle inside a <p>, below a <hx> element, *then* 
one has demoted it, semantically ...

Leif H Silli


> On 7 May 2013 17:21, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> 
>> Steve Faulkner, Tue, 7 May 2013 15:08:05 +0100:
>>> well no it {note: <small>} wasn't which is why it was binned.
>>> 
>>> the circumstance is where you have a title/subtitle that you want to
>>> include in the 'outline' but the subtitle does not start a new
>>> section/subsection
>> 
>> Short answer:
>> 
>> (1) <small> should be fine, of above use case. But (2) why not simply
>> recommend to use <br> for this use case?
>> 
>> Longer answer:
>> 
>> I scanned the discussion last month about <small> - and I could not
>> find any discussion of outline there. But if the <strong> proposal
>> implies
>> 
>>    <h1>Main.</h1><p>Sub.</p>
>> 
>> when one doesn’t want it in the outline, but
>> 
>>    <h1><strong>Main.</strong> Sub.</h1>
>> 
>> when one does want it in the outline, then, for *that* use case,
>> <small>Sub.</small> seems better than <strong>Main.</strong>, because:
>> 
>> 1) it has intuitive CSS - getting the CSS right using <strong>,
>>    would be lots of (unintuitive) work, whereas <small> is simple
>>    to style, though usually not require any CSS
>> 2) we are after demoting the subtitle part - and the role of
>>    <small> is to demote.
>> 3) with regard to the outline, it has the same effect as
>>    <strong>.
>> 4) the semantic change would also be more involved if we went
>>    for <strong>Main</strong> as it would require both a a
>>    change to <strong>, when <strong> occurs inside <hx/>, and
>>    a change of <hx> when <strong> is a child.
>> 
>> However, for the use case when the outline should contain the subtitle,
>> the <br/> element ought to be possible as well. Currently spec says:[1]
>> 
>> ]]br elements must be used only for line breaks that are actually part
>> of the content, as in poems or addresses.[[
>> 
>> And it seem to me we could just add ”or subdivided headings” in the
>> last part, after the comma. We could the leave it up to authors to
>> style subtitles using the elements that suites them (even using
>> <small>  - if we clarifies that <small> can be used for that).
>> 
>> [1]
>> 
>> 
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/text-level-semantics.html#the-br-element

>> 
>> Leif Halvard Silli
>> 
>> 
>>> SteveF
>>> HTML 5.1 <http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/>
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On 7 May 2013 15:02, Christopher Healey <deezignink@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> hgroup was perfect for just this circumstance.
>>>> 
>>>> -Christopher
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On May 7, 2013, at 9:58 PM, Mallory van Achterberg <
>>>> stommepoes@stommepoes.nl> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, May 07, 2013 at 09:52:09AM -0400, Denis Boudreau wrote:
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I do like Steve's proposal using an existing element in h1 to create
>>>> some sort of a hierarchy. But I must admit that the first thing that
>> came
>>>> to mind when reading Steve's proposal for <strong>, I wondered why the
>>>> proposal wasn't for <small>. So depending on whether you want the
>> smaller
>>>> heading above or below the larger one, we could do either of the
>> following:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> <h1>
>>>>>> <small>Breaking News</small>
>>>>>> Steve Faulkner had this crazy idea!
>>>>>> </h1>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> <h1>
>>>>>> Breaking News
>>>>>> <small>Steve Faulkner had this crazy idea!</small>
>>>>>> </h1>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> /Denis
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> Of the two, I like the second one better. Small has always meant
>>>>> "sub" in my mind, read out loud differently like legal text and
>>>>> under-the-breath mutters. First example makes much less sense, since
>>>>> if you just want a styling sandbag, span makes more sense.
>>>>> 
>>>>> -Mallory
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>

Received on Tuesday, 7 May 2013 15:53:24 UTC