Re: less than normal importance/emphasis

On Thu, 18 Dec 2008, Leif Halvard Silli wrote:
> 
> Today, we must do this:
> 
> 	<p>You are so <em>mean</em> and, in fact,
> 	   very <em>dumb</em>, also.</p>
> 
> But with a <neutral> element, we could mark the phrase more naturally, 
> like this:
> 
> 	<p>You are so <em>mean <neutral>and, in fact,
> 	   very</neutral> dumb</em>, also.</p>

I definitely don't think the second of the above is more natural. The 
former seems orders of magnitude simpler and better. Consider what it 
would mean to change the sentence, e.g. by removing the stress on "mean".


> With regard to what Ian mention about what he had or hadn't  seen in
> magazines: We have not seen <strong> or <em> in magazines, either.

I have seen the equivalent of <strong> on cleaning liquid warning labels.
I have seen the equivalent of <em> in many books.


> Nor have we seen <code> either, for that matter.

The equivalent of <code> is seen all over the technology press.


> But we have, in certain Word processors seen the "normal" button. I have 
> in fact missed such a button in HTML now and then. And we have seen 
> bold, italic etc. (See below.)

I don't understand why </em>...<em> is not good enough as a way to 
neutralise emphasis.


> Good thoughts. Such an element could have been called <insert>, for 
> insteance.
> 
> 	<p>He, <insert>as he walked home that day</insert>,
> 	fell in deep thoughts over the whole mark-up idea.</p>

Why does this need markup at all? There's no typographical or aural effect 
involved here as far as I can tell.

We're not doing semantics for the sake of semantics, the point of 
semantics is to be able to have appropriate media- an device- independent 
styling and to be able to perform rudimentry machine-processing.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 18 December 2008 02:03:18 UTC