HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
1.10 Adding Importance to Text
Problem
You want to indicate a span of text that is important.
Solution
Contain the important text with the
strong
element:
<p>
<strong>Registration is required</strong>
for this event.</p>
Discussion
In previous versions of HTML,
strong
was used to indicate strong emphasis. In
HTML5,
strong
indicates importance and is typically used for alerts and warnings.
Redefining <b>
Like its shunned sibling
i
, the
b
element makes a comeback in HTML5. No longer
considered a presentational element,
b
is used to stylistically offset text from the normal
prose without conveying any extra importance.
For example,
b
could be used for keywords, product names, or other content whose
text would typically be unique compared to surrounding text, such as a paragraph lead:
<p>
<b>Once upon a time,</b>
there was a man who lost his mind.</p>
The difference between
strong
and
b
is now more semantically clear, but both are
typically rendered in browsers with a heavier font weight (see
Figure 1-3
). Of course,
CSS lets you change the default styling as needed.
Figure 1-3. Browsers render both the <b> and <strong> elements in bold
See Also
The author's article “The Beauty of Semantic Markup, Part 2: <strong>, <b>, <em>,
