Validity - Refactoring HTML: Improving the Design of Existing Web Applications - page 143

necessary CSS to reproduce the styles. The one I'd make an exception for is the u element. Underlining is
almost never appropriate for anything except links. It's used to simulate italics on typewriters, but it has little
place in print or on the Web.

Many times, however, these elements do have semantic meaning, and it's worth capturing that. For example:

<tt> is sometimes used to mark up code. If so, replace it with <code> .

<tt> is sometimes used to mark up sample output. If so, replace it with <samp> .

<big> is often used for important ( <strong> ) or headline ( <h1>-<h6> ) text.

<s> and <strike> are used to indicate deleted text. If so, replace them with <del> .

Of course, HTML doesn't have elements for all the uses to which you might have put these styles. For instance,
<small> often indicates legal fine print. You can mark this up with CSS and a semantic class:

<span class="legal">
All users of this web site agree to turn over
their first-born children. All legal disputes will be
resolved by binding arbitration overseen by an impartial
panel chosen from the Board of Directors' spouses,
children, and other immediate family members.
</span>

Table 4.7 lists the remaining, less common deprecated elements from classic HTML that you'll want to replace
with CSS.

Table 4.7. CSS Equivalents for Presentational Elements
HTML Attribute CSS Property

big font-size: large

small font-size: small

tt font-family: monospace

u text-decoration: underline

s text-decoration: line-through

strike text-decoration: line-through

The mechanics of fixing them are much the same as for fixing b and i . If you know that all the occurrences of
one of these styles are for the same reason, you can just do a quick regular expression search and replace.
However, if they've been used inconsistently, you'll need to inspect them manually. This isn't as much of a
problem here as with the more common b and i tags, though.