Quote:
Originally Posted by hardbound
Isn't there some original specification that explains the reasons behind their introduction?
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<i> is intended to be italic, for whatever reason.
<em> is intended to be emphasized, in whichever way.
Usually, italic words are italic because they are emphasized, and emphasized words are displayed in italics, so the defaults are the same and they are mostly interchangeable.
Still, there are situations where <em> is not necessarily italic: in typewriter style it could be underlined, in text-to-speech it's definitely not italic (would it be read with an Italian accent or what?).
There is no real danger in using <i> and <b> instead of <em> and <strong>, provided the accompanying CSS is correct. In fact, you could even use <code>, <pre> or <span>, if you modify the default styles, but that would be akin to obfuscating your code.