Totally Useless HTML Element of the Day – The <'em'> Tag
EHH<EM>!… Can I have your attention please!</EM>
Today I would like to talk about the <EM> HTML tag. While searching for information on another apparently useless HTML meta tag, I came across the definition for this HTML element.
The <EM> tag is used to put words in an “Emphasis” style, which strangely enough looks just like italics.
For Example!
There is apparently a distinct difference between the two tags though. The HTML standard defines the <EM> tag as being a “logical style” where the <I> tag is considered a “physical style”.
What this means is that a “physical style directs the browser to display in an italic typeface whereas the logical style directs the browser to display with a distinctive emphasis leaving it to the browser to decide how this is achieved (underlining or distinctive colour might be used).”
(Reference - http://www.scit.wlv.ac.uk/encyc/em.html - Page is no longer available)
In order to further explain the “Emphasis” tag the staff at the University of Wolverhampton performed several experiments with the <EM> tag in different browsers to see how the tag would be displayed. These were their findings:
“All browsers rendered the text using an italic typeface.”
(Side Note: In all fairness, blogs do happen to use the <EM> tag but they use it to create the effect that you get when you click on the “Italic” button in your editor.)
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9 Responses to “Totally Useless HTML Element of the Day – The <'em'> Tag”
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I don’t think it’s totally useless though…
Ok, I’ll classify it as my partialy useless HTML tag for now. I will keep the “revisit-after” meta tag in the top spot, unless someday Canada creates the next Google!
but if they have a same function one of them is totally useless
I just found it weird that the “Italic” button in WordPress applied the < 'em'> tag and not the < 'i'> tag. Shouldn’t it just be the “Emphasis” button then?
I belong to MyBlogLog.com
There are many members who somehow make their user name on MyBlogLog appear “emphasized”.
The site has a great feature that allows you to import a vcard into your address book application. The “emphasized” do not import properly into Address Book on MAC OS X. They show up as user name in my address book application.
Here’s an example from MyBlogLog.com:
http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/mybloglogaac792fad4cc5335db40/
entranceexam1<em>entranceexam1</em>
entranceexam1@yahoo.com
Entrance Exam
Strange. I hate it when some trivial bit of formatting keeps information from importing correctly. Do you happen to know if the import works with other HTML tags? I would be interested to see if there is a difference.
Sucks for me, my new mac is useless now! Well not really but that’s weird.
Hey, thanks for reading the blog man!
no prob man, some of these posts are really useful.