In this article we will learn the semantic difference between <em> and <strong> and also if we should continue using the <i> and <b> tags

Hey you programmer, how are you? Let’s learn more about HTML and its semantics!

These tags are commonly confused, and with good reason, in terms of style they look the same

The <i> and <em> tags make the text italic and the <b> and <strong> tags in turn make the text bold.

So let’s clear up some points!

About Style

Tags should never be used as a form of HTML style

For this purpose we should always opt for CSS, after all we can get the same result without polluting the HTML with tags

In addition to them having specific meaning when we talk about semantics

About Semantics

Now the real purpose of these tags, so let’s go one by one to see their real function:

The <i> tag: Used for special terms, such as the name of a species of animal for example, which is generally not in our language;

The <em> tag: Used to emphasize a text or word;

The <b> tag: Highlight in a text or word;

The <strong> tag: Used for words or texts of high importance in HTML;

So now, the purpose of each one must have become clearer and this must be taken into account, because the mechanism that Google uses to create organic results takes these tags into account

And it’s normal that you’re still a little confused, because the concept of text with emphasis is quite broad and so is high importance

So I suggest checking a documentation, with a broader and more detailed explanation, as well as examples

Conclusion

In this article we learned the semantic difference between <em> and <strong>

And we also learned some other variations with the <i> and <b> tags

Another important point is that these tags should not be used to style the page, this you must do with CSS

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