or & or

ghostyjack · 03-30-2010, 06:46 AM

I know some prefer to use and instead of and , but as far as I can see they are rendered the same.

Can someone explain to me what is the difference between them and why I should use one or the other.

Also, are there any circumstances where you would mix their use?

Jellby · 03-30-2010, 07:16 AM

and are semantic, and are presentational. means emphasized, and while the default is having emphasized text displayed in italics, you could choose to have it underlined, or red, or in a different font... means italic, and while it is possible to change its appearance with CSS, it would be weird to have an element that's not italic. It's basically a matter of style, with the content and presentation separation encouraged by HTML+CSS, semantic markup is preferred.

ghostyjack · 03-30-2010, 07:37 AM

That makes sense, thanks Jellby.

If I didn't apply any style to and , I take it that they would used defaults of italic and bold for their behaviour?

charleski · 03-30-2010, 08:01 AM

The semantic tags and are preferred for general html because they work better with audio browsers and other text-to-speech systems. They should default to italic and bold respectively, so there's no practical difference unless you want your content to work well with TTS.

03-30-2010, 06:46 AM	#1
ghostyjack Guru Posts: 718 Karma: 1085610 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Bristol, England Device: PRS-T1, 1825PT, Galaxy Tab, One X, TF700T, Aura HD, Nexus 7	<em> or <i> & <strong> or <b> I know some prefer to use <i> and <b> instead of <em> and <strong>, but as far as I can see they are rendered the same. Can someone explain to me what is the difference between them and why I should use one or the other. Also, are there any circumstances where you would mix their use?

03-30-2010, 07:16 AM	#2
Jellby frumious Bandersnatch Posts: 7,543 Karma: 19001583 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Spaniard in Sweden Device: Cybook Orizon, Kobo Aura	<em> and <strong> are semantic, <i> and <b> are presentational. <em> means emphasized, and while the default is having emphasized text displayed in italics, you could choose to have it underlined, or red, or in a different font... <i> means italic, and while it is possible to change its appearance with CSS, it would be weird to have an <i> element that's not italic. It's basically a matter of style, with the content and presentation separation encouraged by HTML+CSS, semantic markup is preferred.

03-30-2010, 07:37 AM	#3
ghostyjack Guru Posts: 718 Karma: 1085610 Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Bristol, England Device: PRS-T1, 1825PT, Galaxy Tab, One X, TF700T, Aura HD, Nexus 7	That makes sense, thanks Jellby. If I didn't apply any style to <em> and <strong>, I take it that they would used defaults of italic and bold for their behaviour?

03-30-2010, 08:01 AM	#4
charleski Wizard Posts: 1,196 Karma: 1281258 Join Date: Sep 2009 Device: PRS-505	The semantic tags <em> and <strong> are preferred for general html because they work better with audio browsers and other text-to-speech systems. They should default to italic and bold respectively, so there's no practical difference unless you want your content to work well with TTS.

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