Aw: Re: HTML entities

[Martin J. Dürst]

Hello Asmus, others,

On 2021/03/23 09:29, Asmus Freytag (c) wrote:
> On 3/22/2021 4:23 PM, Martin J. Dürst wrote:


>> I agree that this text from MDN is not very good. I think that what it 
>> meant is something like "don't use <sup> if you want smaller, raised 
>> letters just for a change or just for fun". Also, of course, MDN is 
>> not a specification.
> 
> Right, we get that.
> 
> In the unusual circumstance that I might want smaller, raised letters 
> "just for fun", I may not care about a precise appearance, so I wouldn't 
> pay attention to "rules" anyway.
> 
> The real issue with <sup> compared to <strong> is that language like 
> that makes it masquerade as "semantic", when it isn't.

In my opinion, in these contexts, 'semantic' has to be seen as something 
with a degree. <strong> may have a higher degree of semantics that 
<sup>. For <sup>, it's essentially any kind of semantics that is usually 
displayed as a superscript, which could be e.g. an exponent, a 
superscript index in some mathematical of physical,... notation, a 
superscript in some phonetic notation, and so on. For <strong>, at least 
if we follow the meaning of the word 'strong' itself, it's any kind of 
semantics that implies some kind of strengthening, which still could be 
a rather wide range. In both cases, for finer semantics, an HTML class 
attribute might be used.

Regards,    Martin.


> A./
>