[wp-hackers] Re: [wp-svn] [2476] trunk/wp-admin/quicktags.js:

[Matthew Thomas]

Mark Jaquith wrote:
 >
> [A]lbert Holm wrote:
> > 
> > As Robert pointed out in another reply, the buttons says bold and
 > > italic, and the output is strong and em. I really wonder why that is.
> 
> Probably for legacy reasons.  "strong" and "em" don't really mean much 
> to someone who hasn't been actively involved in making semantic websites 
> recently.  So this keeps the semantic "strong" and "em" in the actual 
> output, but labels them so that anyone who has used a word processor 
> knows what they are for.

I know this wasn't the point of the thread, but ... Please don't do 
that. That'll just result in people using <em> when they really mean 
<cite> or <var>, and <strong> when they really mean <h2> or <h3> or 
<th>. The end result will be that <em> and <strong> become semantically 
meaningless -- non-graphical UAs won't be able to tell whether they're 
supposed to be emphasized or not.

<http://mpt.net.nz/archive/2004/05/02/b-and-i>

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/