This is less about deprecated tags (which <i> and <b> are not), or
"Web 2.0", than about separating structure from presentation.
On its own, the <i> tag communicates no more meaning than a <span> tag
does; however, by default it also adds a presentational/visual
component, which is probably why BBEdit categorizes it as a font-style
element. In the case of book or article titles, though, you are
presenting them in italics because they mean something specific and
call for a tag that communicates that information ("this is a book
title"). Arguably html lacks a perfect tag for such elements; some
argue that <cite> or <cite> with a more specific class attribute
(class="book") comes the closest and is therefore the best choice.
In the case of languages, there is less of a case for a semantic tag.
But html does provides the lang attribute, which at least communicates
something more than something purely visual. Here 'proper' markup
could probably include either <i> or <span> plus the lang attribute;
e.g., <i lang="la">E pluribus unum</i> or <span lang="la">E pluribus
unum</span>. Typically I use span because it is style neutral.
There's a nice article on all of this by Mike Cherim:
http://green-beast.com/blog/?p=222
On Jan 22, 2009, at 10:17 PM, le...@gmail wrote:
> <i> is used when you want to mark text in italics. This is the proper
> way to, for example, tag a title of a book or movie, or the name of
> the publishing source (magazine, newspaper), or to indicate that a bit
> of text is in a foreign language.
--
Peter Weil, Web Developer
University Communications
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Phone: 608-262-6538
Email: [email protected]
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