Hi editors,

As you may have heard about that many developers don't quite like the idea of recycling old elements such as u, i, b, and small.

So the proposal here is introducing replacement elements as early as possible. The reason to do so is to make HTML5 elements more semantics and standardized. And it's not like we should keep using u, i, b, and small forever.

Introducing replacement elements, while temporarily keep the recycled elements, can make browsers start to implement replacement elements. Once all browsers have implemented all replacement elements, we can safely remove those recycled elements from HTML5 spec.

Some suggestion of replacement elements are:

For u (a span of text with an unarticulated, though explicitly rendered, non-textual annotation), we can introduce something like <annot>.

For i (a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose in a manner indicating a different quality of text), we can introduce something like <alt>.

For b (a span of text offset from its surrounding content without conveying any extra emphasis or importance, and for which the conventional typographic presentation is bold text), we can introduce something like <offset>.

For small (represents side comments such as small print), we can introduce something like <note>.

Of course, the above mentioned naming of replacement elements might not be the best. The idea here is aim to make browsers being prepared with replacement elements as early as possible so that we can safely drop the recycled elements from HTML5 spec as early as possible.


Sincerely,
Ian Yang