I always found the deprecation of the <b> element to be one of the most pedantic arguments.
The given option to either swap the tag for something more descriptive or move it to CSS are contradictory. (I understand not wanting to rely on it for header information).
I just want to make the text bold, dangit. I am not writing an essay about how the text is feeling.
Can’t we just admit that the default stylesheet will always render <b> as bold, and that if you want to make it mean something else through CSS, then knock yourself out? This torture of the language has got to stop.
"bring attention to unimportant, emphasized, irrelevant element". That is quite difficult to wrap my head around.
I just continue to be upset that they made <strong> five characters long :/. Why couldn't they have gone with <s>? (And <e> instead of <em>, though that's a lot less problematic.)
I use <strong> all over the place--though, after I was recently pointed at some of the new retconned HTML5 documentation, I did now wonder if some of my uses "should be" <b>; but, now I see the notes about <mark>, and I probably was wanting that one?...--and it makes HTML really annoying as a "markup" language as it causes massive discontinuities in the text I am reading/editing just to add some better inflection.
> Do not confuse the <b> element with the <strong>, <em>, or <mark> elements. The <strong> element represents text of certain importance, <em> puts some emphasis on the text and the <mark> element represents text of certain relevance. The <b> element doesn't convey such special semantic information; use it only when no others fit.
It's hard not to read this as satire. All I want is for my text to be bold, dammit!