vote up 0 vote down
star

Let's talk html. Why am I told to use the <strong> tag instead of <b>? Was <b> too confusing?

flag

3 Answers

vote up 1 vote down
check

Screen readers ignore <b> and <i> because they are just presentational markup (IE: they don't mean anything to the screen reader, they are simply tags that make your text bold or italic). However, screen readers do make use of <strong> and <em> for relating the importance of the encapsulated text.

Many people who need assistance with reading due to various problems use screen readers to "see" a website, so it's a good idea to use <strong> and <em> if you want to truly emphasize the way a word is meant to be interpreted.

I'm not sure if there are any SEO advantages to either. I'm also not sure that <b> and <i> are deprecated, but a lot of people believe they are.

W3C tags: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp
more on screen readers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_reader

link|flag
vote up 1 vote down

if you simply want to display something in "bold" you can use <b> but if you want your browser to know that you are emphasizing something, then you use <strong>.

beyond that, it is better practice to use style sheets where possible

.bold{font-weight:bold;}

<span class="bold">this is bold</span>
link|flag
vote up 1 vote down

The difference is <strong> and <em> convey meaning, whereas <b> and <i> describe how to render text. Although they look the same, they are semantically different.

link|flag

Your Answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.