What is Semantic Markup?
Definitions
- Syntax - Sentence structure and language rules.
- Semantics - The study of relationships between signs and symbols and the meaning they represent.
- In spoken language; syntax relates to punctuation and grammar and semantics relates to the meaning conveyed.
- Semantic Markup -
- "Means [...] that you use tags that have specific meaning assigned to them, either in the
(X)HTML specification, or in generally accepted use." - Mark Pilgrim
- "As much as possible, the tags surrounding the content of a document should describe what
that content is and/or what it's for" - Jason Kottke
(falsely attributed to Douglas Bowman, oops...)
- HTML is for describing the structure and meaning of content - NOT for describing presentation.
- Semantics of HTML 4 & XHTML 1 are identical, the syntax is different
- "The Semantic Web" is related to, but not covered by this presentation