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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

Valid HTML5 markup? It's certainly not semantic. should be , should be

You might want to take a look at this:

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/...

You might want to read this bit from that section: "The b element should be used as a last resort when no other element is more appropriate. In particular, headings should use the h1 to h6 elements, stress emphasis should use the em element, importance should be denoted with the strong element, and text marked or highlighted should use the mark element."

From the looks of it - while just about legal, it's the worst option going. etc are far more preferable and 'right'

Only I don't want my text to be "strong", I want it to be bold, and I don't want my italicized items to me "emphasized", I bloody want them in italics.

I don't consider my bolds and italics to be mere style and much less I consider them mere suggestions.

Bold and italic are typographic conventions of author _intent_ (that is: semantics) with centuries of use. I put them there in purpose, and I don't want them converted to anything else via styling. Sure, someone can style "b" as "purple text with a yellow dotted underline", but I might as well make my _actual_ intention clear.

Outside of its proper context, "semantic" is just a BS notion that got popular with designers and co because it sounds sophisticated, giving rise to inane arguments similar to how many angels fit in the head of a needle.

I understand that, but when I open your page in lynx I don't want to read text without any formatting because there are no direct equivalents to "bold" or "italics".

People actively block Internet Explorer. They've probably never heard of lynx / links / elinks / w3m.

I'm happy when they don't use idiotic alt tags. If they manage to use good alt tags I'm really happy.

Accessible web design is seen as some freakish niche need, and is often relegated to something to do later, if ever.

Well, then just ignore them --or show them with bold and _italics_, Markdown style.

Although, I think modern terminals can do bold fonts, e.g this gives you bold in bash:

echo -e "\033[1mtest\033[0m again"

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