[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Most writers emphasize with italics, and reserve bold for the most minor sort of breakhead.

... in English.

That's another reason why <em> was introduced:

English (and most Latin-alphabets) tend to use italics for emphasis.

But Asian languages don't have such a thing as italics. They emphasize using dots (and other symbols).

As the internet spread across the world, there were more and more cases where <i> and <b> failed.

Side Note #1: For emphasis, along with italics, there's been lots of different display types:

• bold
• letter-spacing
• highlight
• colors
• [...]

For a little more info, see Wikipedia: "Emphasis (Typography)".

But you can clearly see how E M P H A S I S is a distinct category from plain old italics.

Side Note #2: A lot of the multi-lingual stuff was being discussed at the end of the very last thread:

"<i>, <em> or <span> for italics ?" (Post #151+)

There was a TUG talk given in 2020: "Typographical expression of emotions in a variety of alphabet systems"... I should re-contact them and see if they ever posted the lecture online. Sadly, I signed up for the conference, but missed the livestream of that talk.

Originally Posted by Notjohn

To me,it's a distinction without a difference. I prefer i and b because they do what they say, while em and strong are ambiguous.

<em> is not ambiguous.

But I agree, HTML5's explanation of <strong> is a little... ehhhh...

Originally Posted by Notjohn

Lots of html is nutty. For example, the claimed distinction between an apostrophe and a single close-quote. One shrugs one's shoulders and gets on with it.

Again, multi-lingual.

See the fantastic article me+Toxaris (and others) always point to:

Wikipedia: "Quotation mark" > Summary Table

Around the world, there's every single combination under the sun for quote marks.

Just so happens to be, in English, the "apostrophe" + "right single quote" (single "close quote") settled on using the same-looking symbol.

Just like it just so happens to be, in English, emphasis settled on italics.

Originally Posted by AlanHK

If you're doing scientific articles in epub, all respect to you, but that's a pretty esoteric market.

Not necessarily. The academic + scientific market is pretty huge. Minority, yes, but large nonetheless.

And it's an example where lots of proper markup is used. Just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it's not out there (and should be strived towards).

Originally Posted by AlanHK

I meant, they have never discussed repurposing the text (except from print to ebook, or for webpages, which is trivial) or converting to audio automatically -- for audiobooks, they use a human reader, which is by far the best result.

They just care what it looks like.

And when their crappily-designed, not-following-the-standards, "I just care about the looks" ebook breaks a few years down the line? You'll be back to cleaning it up.

A lot of my work is cleaning up 10+-year old EPUBs that were poorly converted, bringing them up to date + following the latest standards.

Another large chunk is compilations—taking chapters from multiple books, combine into a single book. (When you combine books, you typically have to normalize the texts so they are consistent within themselves. [Like all UK spelling/quotes -> US spelling/quotes.])

Or releasing a single, larger chapter as a standalone.

(My latest 3 projects were 1 in each of these categories!)

Originally Posted by AlanHK

And I have never, in 30 years, had an author who was able to use Word styles usefully. Trying to educate them about XML is just unthinkable.

Well, that's your issue. I've successfully converted quite a few authors into Styles after teaching them how much better it is.

(Seriously, it only takes ~30 minutes to watch a few of those Styles videos... and it'll save any author TONS of time.)

Yes, you'll still have 99% of the crowd mindlessly clicking the BOLD + CENTER + FONT SIZE buttons (hundreds of times)... but once you unleash the power of Styles, wow.

See my most recent Styles post on Reddit:

• /r/writers: "Paragraph Formatting shortcuts?"

and my Styles posts in 2019/2020:

• 2019: "MS Word vs. Open Office Word"
• 2020: "eBook Formatting in Sigil", especially Posts #46 + #50 + #52

If it's people who will be working with me over the years... Styles just saved them+me hundreds of hours of work. And the more they plan on writing, the more and more time Styles will save.

There's absolutely no reason NOT to use Styles!

And if I can take it down from 99% to 98% people, wow... take one down, pass it around, 98% who don't use Styles on the wall!

Originally Posted by AlanHK

I learnt HTML back in the 90s, did it for years before I learned any CSS, so I use all those as appropriate. And I much prefer e.g. just <h2> for chapter heads than a p or div class; not least because it more or less works with no CSS and lets me generate a TOC in Sigil.

And another aim of proper markup is progressive enhancement.

For example, I always converted all tables into actual <table>, but I had no idea about <thead> until recently.

<thead> allows long tables (or tables that get split across pages) to carry headings over + allows the computer to understand main headings (instead of trying to guess).

Accessibility Ranking

So, let's say we were going from worst -> best.

An image of a table is worst:

<img alt="" src="../Table1.png"/>

Adding an alt tag is better:

<img alt="Table 1" src="../Table1.png"/>

Converting to <table> is much better:

<table>
	<tr>
		<th>Name</th>
		<th>Age</th>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>Tex</td>
		<td>999</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>Example</td>
		<td>123</td>
	</tr>
</table>

and this is best:

<table>
<thead>
	<tr>
		<th scope="col">Name</th>
		<th scope="col">Age</th>
	</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
	<tr>
		<td>Tex</td>
		<td>999</td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td>Example</td>
		<td>123</td>
	</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

If we use a % Accessibility score, you might have:

• 0%: <img>
  
  • A blind person (and/or search engine) will have zero clue what this image is.
• 25%: <img> with alt
  
  • At least they know: "Hey, there's an image of 'Table 1' here."
    
  • And if the image is ever lost/missing, there's placeholder text.
    
  • And a more descriptive alt would be even better!
• 90%: <table>
  
  • Text-to-Speech can actually read all the data.
    
  • A blind reader can navigate all the data, going forward/back if needed.
    
  • You can make the font as large as you need.
• 100%: <table> with <thead> + scope
  
  • Everything will be read out loud correctly (like a human would)
    
  • + it works across split pages (very common on small cellphone screens)!

So, if we look at the ebook as a whole, that little list I gave in Post #21 are the major fixes, and probably gets you 75% of the way there:

• Headings allow users to easily jump around the book
• Tables allow all data to be read
• lang allows spelling/dictionary-lookup/hyphenation/text-to-speech to be correct.
• [...]

Then each of those little Accessibility/markup enhancements slowly add up... taking care of edge cases + alternate ways of reading.

The code in the ebook is much more than just surface visuals.

Originally Posted by Turtle91

I would suggest that shows a complete lack of awareness about people with accessibility issues. I was there not too long ago, then I was forced to become aware… and now I care. Don’t feel lonely though - there are a lot of people that are unaware and don’t care.

The distinction is that the reading devices/apps can, and do, treat them (b/i, em/strong) differently. So, as a professional, it would be incumbent upon us to do things the right way, rather than not.