The "semantic witch hunt" against using tables for page layout exists not because the table tag is a semantic tag, but rather because pages are not tables. Like

The "semantic witch hunt" against using tables for page layout exists not because the table tag is a semantic tag, but rather because pages are not tables. Likewise, ul and li tags are semantic, and I think most people would advise against using them for something other than unordered lists and list items. Of course, the issue would probably come up rarely, since the browser stylesheets for those tags don't do anything particularly useful for anything other than lists and list items.