Logical Tags
What's so logical about logical tags?
The original intent of HTML was to mark up text to indicate the purpose of each part of the
document. Text within the <H1 ...> is a header, text within <CODE>
is code from a program.
Although logical tags (also called Idiomatic Elements) indicate different types of
information, most of them are usually rendered in one of just a few ways: italics, bold, or monospace
(all characters the same width):
This is emphasized text
This is cited text
This is strong text
|
This is sample text
This is code text
This is keyboard text
|
So if logical tags just look like bold or italics, why use them at all? Why not just use
<B> when you want bold? Logical tags have lost favor to "formatting" tags, which indicate
the physical appearance of the document (for example <B> for BOLD). This loss of popularity
is unfortunate, because logical tags still serve some important purposes:
- Logical tags allow the browser to render that information in the manner most appropriate for that
browser. Text that should be emphasized (
<EM>) may be best emphasized in Windows with
italics, and bold in Unix.
- Logical tags help you, the author, keep track of what you are saying, without the distraction of
presentation. If you need to indicate someone's address, use
<ADDRESS>, knowing it will be
presented in an appropriate manner.
