[whatwg] De-emphasis

[Jonathan Worent]

Here are my thoughts on the subject:


Lets not confuse emphasis and importance. Emphasis defines how much something is stressed. We have
to remember that importance does not change the meaning of content. Something that is emphasized
is stressed more in relation to other things. Something that is de-emphasized is stressed less.
Using both is incredibly important to human speech, which is why my original use case was in
marking up dialogs. 


We should not add an attribute to em we should and a new de-emphasis element. I suggest <dem>.
Nesting is already common with current use of em and strong, and the new use of heading. Adding an
attribute to do this is a whole new concept and should be avoided. 


We already have multiple elements that do similar yet opposite things (e.g. ins/del) so adding a
de-emphasis to match emphasis is not a new concept. If you don't think multiple elements that do
similar thing should be in the spec then change <ins>/<del> to <edit action="">. But that of
course give merit to allowing an attribute on em to define the level of stress. 


The argument that no-one would use it is pointless. There are plenty of elements in the spec right
now that aren't likely to be used often, but they're still in the spec because they have merit. 


As for the default styling: I'd say either opacity or reducing text size for visual browsers. For
audio browsers, voice-stress seem like the obvious choice. 

Thank you for listening.
___ Jonathan Worent ___


 
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