Re: I and B vs EM and STRONG

Yes. This is what the guideline about using the standard recommendations, 
correctly, is about.

Charles McCathieNevile

On Wed, 18 Nov 1998, Nir Dagan wrote:

> The common statement "use <EM> instead 
> of <I>" can be quite misleading.
> 
> One should use EM, CITE, VAR, DFN, etc. instead of I.
> 
> When speaking emphasizing is pronounced differently that 
> mentioning a name of book or newspaper. Al tells as that 
> this is the case also in Brille. In visual media they
> are all rendered the same.
> 
> Because <I> has no semantics  in parctice all media 
> which do not render italics translate <I> to <EM> by default.
> (this may be ofcourse a controvertial practice; one may 
> suggest that they should ignore the typographical hint altogether)
> Therefore using <EM> instead of <I> doesn't matter per current 
> browser practice; it is more a matter of elegance and the 
> simplicity of following the principle  of  using "structural" rather 
> than typographical elements.
> 
> What realy matters is to use CITE, VAR etc. when appropriate 
> and not I or EM for all "italized" words.
> 
> Some people who try to improve their documents do 
> so by replacing all their <I> with <EM>. This is an error.
> 
> Netscape composer of Communicator 4.0 replaces 
> all <EM> <CITE> <VAR> and <DFN> of a document written 
> elsewhere with <I>, when resaving the document, and it does this 
> without BLINKing...
> 
> Nir Dagan, Ph.D.
> http://www.nirdagan.com
> mailto:nir@nirdagan.com
> 
> "There is nothing quite so practical as a good theory." 
> -- A. Einstein
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 18 November 1998 06:27:40 UTC