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<b> or <strong>? Treat <b> Tag As Companies Treat Programmers!
Thank you b tag for applying to our company. We’ll run some tests to see if you deserve to become a strong tag
There’s a lot of stigma around the b tag. Usually no one is talking when you should use one or another. Often I see tips that b should not be used at all, and strong tag should be used instead.
For the visual user these tags are the same. Both make the text bold, just like if you applied font-style: bold.
So should we really use strong everywhere? To not seem like we use an obsolete b tag and not being ridiculed by the peers?
Actually, the truth about what tag to use is more complicated, but really easy to understand.
Let’s go through the important aspects. Some focus on only one, that’s why they don’t see the whole picture!
Technical Aspect
Fortunately for us, HTML is beautifully specified language and we have a source of truth on this one.
Here’s how b tag is described:
The b element represents a span of text to which attention is being drawn for utilitarian purposes without conveying any extra importance and with no implication of an alternate voice or mood, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, actionable words in interactive text-driven software, or an article lede
And that’s how strong tag is described:
The strong element represents strong importance, seriousness, or urgency for its contents.
Importance: the strong element can be used in a heading, caption, or paragraph to distinguish the part that really matters from other parts that might be more detailed, more jovial, or merely boilerplate. (This is distinct from marking up subheadings, for which the hgroup element is appropriate.)
Seriousness: the strong element can be used to mark up a warning or caution notice.
Urgency: the strong element can be used to denote contents that the user needs to see sooner than other parts of the document.
