On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Jeremy Keith <jer...@adactio.com> wrote: > This is no longer true. The semantics of <b> and <i> have been changed in > HTML5, specifically to separate the presentation from the meaning. > Specifically, any reference to screen- or page-specific styling like "bold" > and "italic" have been removed (allowing the elements to still have meaning > in a medium such as audio).
It's kind of a fake, though, since the definition includes "spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is boldened" and "other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized". With those semantics, there's no sensible way to render them in any medium except bold and italics. In speech, you could never present them properly based on those semantics -- you'd probably just have to ignore them. For example, even if you wanted to audibly offset italicized thoughts (which you probably don't), you can't distinguish thoughts from ship names. The presentation-independence is hollow: the semantics are such that it is correct to use <b>/<i> for exactly those things that are conventionally bolded or italicized.
