Forum Moderators: not2easy
Italic text on a computer screen stinks. I never use the <i> tag. Hardly ever use the <b> element.
I do, however, sometimes use strong or em but more often I'll use span with a class. And if I do use strong or em, I usually give it it's own style rule - mainly to avoid italic but also I've found that a slightly contrasting font with a bold weight works nicely for emphasis.
(For example, even in print-bound Word documents, I'll write the body text in 12 pt Times New Roman and use Arial Bold 11 pt for emphasis. Looks nice, to my eye, at least.
What do others do?
Do you share the same view of italic text?
As for Italic, your right it doesnt always look that great but I generally only use it on a few words at a time(using em). Its still readable and gets the point across :).
Do you share the same view of italic text?
admittedly a span class would do the same job but <em> is screen reader/text browser friendly too..
Suzy
Do you share the same view of italic text?
Not really. If you have an anti-aliased font setup or use ClearType in Windows XP, italics look great.
That aside, sure italics can look a little untoward in regular aliased situations, but italics have a use and a meaning. Your idea of changing the style is good, since italics are meant to be 'different'. However, I would argue that using italics comes way above many of the usability/readability disasters people commit every day.. links without underlines, links that are the same color as the text, poor color text choices, tiny nasty Verdana text anyone over 40 can't read.. and so on.
I also put the main heading of each page in h1 tags, and give subheadings h2 tags etc.
Those tags were invented for good reasons, so use them! Don't use styled spans to make it look how you want, because the browser won't know what kind of content it's reading. Use the correct tags, and then tweak the styles of those tags to get the look you want.
sometimes use strong or em but more often I'll use span with a class.
Keep in mind the semantic meaning of the tags <em> and <strong>. How they really look is a question of layout, so <em> enclosed words don´t have to be in italics. But these tags do have a certain meaning in your hypertext document - don´t use <span style="font-weight:bold"> if the phrase´s meaning is emphasized.
Just my 2 cents,
Lars
I don't want to sound anti-disablity, I'm not, but I admit that most of the time I am not worried about such distinctions .. but if you DO want to be totally accessible and friendly to netizens everywhere, this is a point well worth considering.
Jordan
Those tags are not valid in XHTML.
Are you sure about that? I can't find anything in the XHTML 1.0 spec that says <big> and <small> aren't to be used.
However, I am rather disappointed in this, since the philosophy of XHTML/CSS is that the content goes into the XHTML, the presentation details into the CSS. SMALL and BIG are a bit too 'presentation' related for my liking to be in a purely content related file, but if the DTD allows it, so be it :)
Thanks for making me check this out, however.
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
That is not a CSS substitution for <strong> and <em>. They are substitutes for <b> and <i>!
How is a screen reader going to interpret a font's style or weight? More importantly, how is the information carried to a screen reader with no CSS support?
Hadn't given the screen reader angle enough consideration.
Maybe I should stick to just styling em and strong to my liking and skip span with a class.
Good to hear that italic text stinks less on flat-panel displays but most of us are still stuck with CRTs and the jaggies for the moment.
Where are those high-res monitors that are supposed to be a near-substitute for print on paper that I've been hearing about for years? A good flat-panel is a nice improvement, but it's still not a sub for printed text.
(Of course, the trade-off is color without any additional cost and that's a major thing. The glass is half-full!)
rich
<p>This <strong>stands out</strong> and this <strong class="stronger">stands out even more</strong></p>
and in your CSS
strong.stronger {font-size:105%;}
(or you could change the colour, or whatever)
I'm not sure I would want to do it myself, but there may be reasons in specific cases. Doing this would seem to be preferable to using <span> for the reason given by DrDoc.
Jordan
Use of appropriate tags (<em>, <strong>, <dfn>, <h1>, <h2> etc) enhances the content's meaning.
By all means define visual styles for those tags, but don't just think visually - partly because there may be future xhtml-compliant screen readers that do take notice of tags, but also because using appropriate tags is a really simple, neat, efficient way to code!
Fair enough. :)
Ps. I don't necessarily agree (I'm kind of undecided on the matter), but some people would argue that phrasing tags like <em> and <strong> should only be used in conjunction with font styling tags (<i> and <b>) or CSS styling, not as a replacement for them. I.e., <span class="strong"><strong>...
Jordan
strong { font-weight: bold; etc }
...
<strong>content</strong>
I think that you were trying to say that CSS, not (X)HTML, should be used for styling, and I agree, but that's exactly what this does: the content and it's meaning is given with (X)HTML, and the visual styling is given with CSS. Surely this is the most efficient and most appropriate way? If it's not, I'm looking forward to learning why it's better to do it another way :)
Actually, that does look like the best way to go about it for the CSS saavy. No extra tags needed that way. I didn't understand what you were meaning earlier, my bad. :)
Jordan
If you just use span, the meaning is lost without the CSS.
I think we need to look at this from a semantic point of view. If the viewer has CSS then they get whatever style has been added. But if the document is viewed without CSS, it should still have meaning. So <strong> and <em> still give the relevant meaning to the text.If you just use span, the meaning is lost without the CSS.
Excellent point Hester. There is more to it than just the visual or even aural presentation. At the basic level strong and em give meaning to their contents.
