[whatwg] Can <var> possibly work?

[Henri Sivonen]

On Sep 20, 2008, at 01:41, Ozob the Great wrote:

> I am concerned about the existence of HTML5's <var>. This was  
> brought to my attention during a technical debate on Wikipedia which  
> amounted to: Where is use of <var> appropriate?

One can use <var> instead of <i> to style a variable or placeholder  
differently from non-placeholder text.

The use cases for <var> probably aren't strong enough to warrant its  
addition to HTML at this stage if it hadn't been in HTML already--you  
might as well use <i>. However, given that <var> has already been in  
HTML for a long time, it probably isn't harmful enough to make it non- 
conforming. Actually, its main harm is the opportunity cost of the  
debates about when it's appropriate to use it. :-/

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/