[whatwg] Double meaning of the <u> element

[Bronislav Klučka]

On 2.5.2012 4:39, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
> On Wed, 2012-05-02 at 11:31 +1000, Shaun Moss wrote:
>
>> I know it's contentious, but as a teacher it's very simple to teach
>> students of HTML5 that:
>> <u>  = underline
>> <b>  = bold
>> <i>  = italic
>> <s>  = strikethrough
>>
>> Of course, I also teach<strong>  and<em>, but the simplest way to teach
>> <b>  and<i>  is that it's merely an easy way to create bold or italic
>> text when the meaning of<strong>  or<em>  doesn't apply. They represent
>> a convenience that spares the author the work of using span tags and
>> creating a CSS class with font-weight or font-style properties.<u>  is
>> the same, just an easy way to create underlined text. It doesn't really
>> need semantics piled on top of it - that just makes it harder to teach
>> and learn. But using Chinese names or misspelled text as /examples/ of
>> when to use<u>  is another matter.
>>
>> I grok the desire to have all tags defined semantically, but if the
>> semantic definitions add unnecessary complexity, then it just seems like
>> a kludge. Anyone can understand<b>  = bold.
>>
>> Shaun
>>
>>
>>
>> On 2012-04-30 3:46 PM, Andrés Sanhueza wrote:
>>> The<u>   element was made conforming due to widespread usage and for
>>> some cases were other elements weren't suitable. However, I feel that
>>> the current definition is not very clear, as it gives two somewhat
>>> unrelated used for it: misspelled text and proper names on Chinese. I
>>> believe that is fine if is one or the other, but by the current
>>> definition seems that the purpose of retaining the element is merely
>>> were to underline needs to be used to represent something regardless
>>> what it is, which seems inconsistent with other similar tags that are
>>> better defined to have more finite purposes that aren't based on the
>>> fallback presentational look, even if relevant at the time of defining
>>> those. By the definitions seems that proper names and book names are
>>> suitable to be indicated by<b>   and<cite>   respectively; or some new
>>> element altogether. I'm aware that the fallback look is an issue, yet
>>> I believe it should be resolved in a more consistent way.
>
> I still seems more important to ask why something should be bold or
> italic. Surely getting students into the mindset of describing their
> data is more beneficial?

Well I can imagine usage of italic or bold in text without <strong> and 
<em> semantics... imagine prose about hero in quiet night and jet 
passing above his/her head... the sound of the jet and the hero 
response... nice adepts for italic and bold....
But yes... no reason for existence of b, u, s, i elements.

B.