[whatwg] [br] element should not be a line break

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Wed, Aug 4, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Jeremy Keith <jeremy at 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.