B.5 Character Formatting

There are two ways to indicate text formatting:

1. Logical ” according to its meaning

2. Physical ” according to its appearance

As you familiarize yourself with both of these, you can see the committee mentality at work. Either two groups already had different codes in place, or someone wanted to go home.

Many pages use physical tags even though logical tags are standard. The rule is, BE CONSISTENT.

WYSIWYGs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, which don't require a lot of text entry, use the logical tags. (If you don't have to type <STRONG></STRONG> again and again, you don't really care that the software package chose to use it over <B></B> .)

Cascading style sheets (more on them later) will make font/text tags even more interesting than they are now.

B.5.1 Logical Tags

<EM>	For emphasis ” usually italics
<STRONG>	For strong emphasis ” usually bold
<CODE><KBD>	Various ” Fixed-width font

B.5.2 Physical Tags

<B>	Bold text
<I>	Italic text
<TT>	Typewriter Text