[thelist] replace <b> with <strong> (why dont use b tag)]

[aardvark]

> From: "rudy" <r937 at interlog.com>
[...]
> bold is a VISUAL SCANNING CUE in this context, and it would NOT MAKE
> SENSE to have aural browsers EMPHASIZE those words while actually
> READING THE COPY
>
> make sense?
>
> i know aardvark is going to argue with this, because he argues with me
> on everything where i think i've figured out what a certain tag is
> for...

nope, i agree...

i think back to Mad magazine from the early 80s with those 'Shut
Up" cartoons...

the copy wasn't hand-inked text like so many comics or other
features in Mad, it was actually typeset... i always found that odd...

what was even more odd to me as a kid was that a *lot* of the
words were bold... i'd try to read just the bold words to look for
hidden messages, or read them out loud and emphasize the bold
words, but to no avail... there was no viable reason to convey
emphasis with those words...  the typesetter simply made them
bold so they'd add some color to the page (color, in the
typographic sense, not RGB sense)...

if i had to convert that Mad Magazine page to HTML, i'd use <b>
over <strong> because it is strictly a visual effect the typesetter
wanted... remembering how i read those aloud while emphasizing
the bold words tells me that i do *not* want a screen reader to
emphasize them, else the poor user might think the thing had gone
all Hal9000 on them...

there are viable cases where <b> is better than <strong>, but i
don't trust many authors to know when...

they also tend to be rare cases...


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