Comments on: Draw attention with mark

By: swhiteman

swhiteman — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 20:24:23 +0000

Old post, but since @Edward posted recently, thought I’d join in because his point is well taken.

Maybe I’d separate them semantically like this:

em: when you add emphasis as the phrase is read, including by screen readers, regardless of context, so the is important at the most unadorned version of the resource.

mark: when emphasis is relative to the context of the document, i.e. if it is the result of a search or persistent filter. I have difficultly imagining when a raw source document would have s, rather I would see this as a runtime representation of a resource.

By: Edward

Edward — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:28:13 +0000

So, I am working with a lot of pre-existing content (old print stuff) that includes many instances block-quotes in which the author has italicized some relevant portion of the quoted text and then followed the quote with a parenthetical “(emphasis added)”.

I have always understood these to be emphasized text and I don’t really see any semantic difference to a typical use of or why the fact that it is happening inside quoted text would require a different tag such as .

If writers commonly refer to this situation as emphasis, it should use the emphasis tag. Setting a standard in which something commonly called emphasis is not really the proper use of the emphasis tag is just inviting tag misuse and non-conformance.

By: Mike Robinson

Mike Robinson — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 08:58:49 +0000

Thanks for the feedback Sam. I’ll speak to the other doctors and see if we can make the highlighting optional or less obtrusive.

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:23:55 +0000

Edit:

Actually, even opening articles in a new tab—when clicked directly from Google—will still show the highlighting. It only disappears when I either copy the url and go to it or when I use Command-Return to open the page in a new tab from the site itself.

P.S. I hope I don’t sound whiney, I’m just trying to provide all the information needed should you decide to try this out. ;)

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:03:27 +0000

Is there any way to turn this off when visiting your site? You guys usually have good advice, but I tend to avoid you because the highlighting is so distracting. I can get rid of it by opening the article in a new tab instead of clicking directly in from Google—or by using my Web Inspector—but I think it’d be great if you included a little JavaScript link to turn it off. Like right next to the Tweet button. And it could be “mark”ed as well, so that it could be more easily seen.

I think it would be simple enough to implement, but I can’t understand a word of JavaScript myself, so I don’t really know.

By: Zeke Franco

Zeke Franco — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:15:32 +0000

@jacob q is for non-sectioning quotes. “They will fail” was part of a larger quote not a sub quote of the blockquote. q element also implies that you want the content wrapped in ” ” which wasn’t the case.

By: Jacob Rask

Jacob Rask — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 12:40:40 +0000

In the first example, wouldn’t the q element also be suitable?

By: Bruce Lawson’s personal site : Highlight search terms automagically with JavaScript and mark

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:39:34 +0000

[...] more information about the mark element, see Miek Robinson’s HTML5doctor article Draw attention with mark. Posted in HTML5, accessibility web standards . Follow comments via RSS feed. Comment. [...]

By: Links for August 20th | jonathan stegall: creative tension

Links for August 20th | jonathan stegall: creative tension — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:03:46 +0000

[...] Draw attention with mark | HTML5 Doctor [...]

By: Aleksey

Aleksey — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 20:00:26 +0000

I was wondering why all the yellow stayed on my screen when highlighting parts of web pages. Thanks to this new element, I won’t have that problem anymore! LOL ^_^

In all seriousness tough, it’s a needed element.