Maybe the terms "global emphasis" and "local emphasis" could help. In
printed media bold and italic print behave differently in the sense that
bold words grab attention directly, since it is based on lightness
difference, for which the entire retina is highly sensitive, whereas
italic words only grab attention when looked at, since it is based on
differences in orientation, for which the fovea is much more sensitive.
Hence, bold words have meaning with regard to the entire document and
italic words have meaning just for the sentence read at the moment.
Although the em and strong elements are deliberately detached from their
appearance, the emerging semantics (global and local emphasis) still
make sense. Note that from a perception point of view, global emphasis
may also be achieved by other means for which the entire retina is
sensitive. Difference in color for example. Local emphasis may also be
achieved by changing font. [1,2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emphasis_(typography)
[2] http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/em.html
Regards,
Rikkert Koppes
Peter Michaux wrote:
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 12:45 PM, Edward O'Connor <[email protected]> wrote:
The HTML 5 spec doesn't give clear guidance on the choice between
strong and em tags.
The spec distinguishes between importance (<strong>) and emphasis
(<em>) like so:
"The placement of emphasis changes the meaning of the sentence. The
element thus forms an integral part of the content."
and
"Changing the importance of a piece of text with the strong element
does not change the meaning of the sentence."
So, basically, putting <em> around different words in a sentence
changes the sentence's meaning, whereas moving <strong> around in the
same way doesn't alter the meaning of the text.
Do you think that's sufficiently clear?
I suppose it is reasonably clear with these two sentences. I should
have attributed more attention to them.
Thank you,
Peter
