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Several originally presentational elements have been re-defined in HTML5 as having vague semantics distinct from just a styled span, but also distinct from any similarly styled semantic elements; those which could not be were deprecated. This applies to more
than just sup/sub, e.g. <i> is treated as a vague differentiated, but not emphasised, voice, such as commentary or a character's thoughts, et cetera.<br>
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This has some interesting effects: <small> has been interpreted as a deëmphasis and is still valid, while the accompanying <big> is deprecated since it could not be given a consistent distinctive semantic (e.g., headings should use heading elements).<br>
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—Har.<br>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Unicode <unicode-bounces@unicode.org> on behalf of Marius Spix via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, March 22, 2021 5:44:10 PM<br>
<b>To:</b> christoph.paeper@crissov.de <christoph.paeper@crissov.de><br>
<b>Cc:</b> unicode@unicode.org <unicode@unicode.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Fw: Aw: Re: HTML entities</font>
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<div>I did some further research: The WHATWG spec differs from the Mozilla definition. It lists <sup> and <sup> in the text-level semantics section and states:</div>
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<div>> These elements must be used only to mark up typographical conventions with specific meanings, not for typographical presentation for presentation's sake.</div>
<div>> The sub element can be used inside a var element, for variables that have subscripts.</div>
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<div>See also: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/text-level-semantics.html#the-sub-and-sup-elements</div>
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<div>Rergards,</div>
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<div>Marius Spix</div>
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<div style="margin:0 0 10px 0"><b>Gesendet:</b> Montag, 22. März 2021 um 18:37 Uhr<br>
<b>Von:</b> "Marius Spix" <marius.spix@web.de><br>
<b>An:</b> christoph.paeper@crissov.de<br>
<b>Cc:</b> unicode@unicode.org<br>
<b>Betreff:</b> Aw: Re: HTML entities</div>
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<div>Dear Christoph,</div>
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<div>according to Mozilla [1],</div>
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<div>> The <sup> element should only be used for typographical reasons—that is, to change the position of the text to comply > with typographical conventions or standards, rather than solely for presentation or appearance purposes.</div>
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<div>[1] <a href="https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/sup" target="_blank">
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/sup</a></div>
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<div>Regards,</div>
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<div>Marius Spix</div>
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<div style="margin:0 0 10.0px 0"><b>Gesendet:</b> Montag, 22. März 2021 um 18:17 Uhr<br>
<b>Von:</b> "Christoph Päper via Unicode" <unicode@unicode.org><br>
<b>An:</b> unicode@unicode.org<br>
<b>Betreff:</b> Re: HTML entities</div>
<div>Marius Spix via Unicode <unicode@unicode.org>:<br>
><br>
> CSS is also no solution, because <sub> and <sub> are semantic tags (like <del>, <strong>, <em> and <kbd>) and not just stylistic ones (like <s>, <b>, <i> or <tt>).<br>
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When HTML introduced the `b`/`strong` and `i`/`em` distinctions, it should also have added presentational/semantic pairs<br>
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- `sup`/`exp` (exponent) or `pow` (power) and<br>
- `sub`/`idx`, `ind` (index) or `base`.<br>
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I don’t think the WHATWG or W3C would be interested in adding them now.<br>
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