3 ms·

For the purposes of screen readers, it is suggested to use <em> over <i>. What bugs me is the recent usage of <i> as an icon holder.

• Symbiote 10y ago
  See the specification for <i>, a taxonomic designation is the first example of its use. https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-element https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/text-level-semantics.html#the-i-...
  • talmand 10y ago
    Well, I should specify I meant that in most cases using <em> is preferred over <i> in terms of the traditional sense of what <i> was used for in the past. These days both have their specific uses, but in most cases one would more likely to use <em>. For example, further down the page: "Authors are encouraged to consider whether other elements might be more applicable than the i element, for instance the em element for marking up stress emphasis, or the dfn element to mark up the defining instance of a term." As an element it used to be the way to italicize text, to emphasize that text, before CSS. These days it has had a semantic reason for its existence applied which is a slight variation of its original purpose under the HTML4 spec.