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As requested in IRC: boblet: Hixie: new descriptions are clear for ppl who understand the distinction, but could each use a sentence describing the difference (similar to the one in <section> about diffs with <div>) It looks like this is already done, but just in case. It might be good to have something like the following in the spec/wiki/Lachy’s guide: # New sectioning elements in a nutshell: * <section>—a generic chunk of related content * <article>—an independent, self-contained chunk of related content, that still makes sense on it’s own (eg in an RSS feed) * <aside>—a chunk of content that is tangentially related to the content that surrounds it, but isn’t essential to understanding that content * <nav>—navigation for the site or page * (cf. <div>—a generic chunk of content with no additional semantics, eg for CSS styling hooks) (from top of http://boblet.tumblr.com/post/141239118/html5-structure4 )
I looked into adding a usage summary for the sectioning elements, but I was worried that having multiple definitions (especially a normative full one and a non-normative and more terse summary one) would confuse at least as many people as it helped. The text we have now for the elements is pretty carefully phrased to avoid as much confusion as possible, I don't want to add more text that might confuse things again. Punting to Lachy's draft feel free to reassign to me if you have a concrete idea of how to do this without causing more problems than it solves.