Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! It's been a while, hasn't it? And yet I haven't even drawn up a contract (I haven't lost my sense of humor, I assure you, I was an intern at Tex during all this time). You can't imagine how excited I was to see you again! And to start this recovery (because finally, it's a little bit back to school for us too)Question to all of you email marketing enthusiasts who are watching us from your Adapta ergonomic seat while munching on a salmon bägel from Picard's and scattering crumbs everywhere: what HTML tag are you going to use to put text in bold ? What other tag will you use to switch from text in italics ? Or even to underline a piece of text? Ouuuuuhhh my ears are ringing! Let's go and talk about it.
Issue
I notice in many HTML integrations the untimely use of <strong>, <em>, <b>, <i> or even <u> to graphically format a piece of text. Let's be clear, I said "to shape graphically".. And that's a bad habit, that's the problem. By the way, do you know where this expression comes from? Point G culture that is necessary: the pack-saddle is a saddle for the beasts of burden on which one places their load. The animals whose pack-saddle was badly fixed or too much loaded had wounds which made them suffer. Ch'bim, we will fall asleep on our two ears... Do you know where this expression comes from? But stop, I digress... I'll skip the email preview tests, which "unfortunately" for the moment don't go my way. Indeed, any text within a <strong> will be displayed in bold. Any text in a <em> will be displayed in italics... Any text in a <b> will be displayed in bold, and so on... I'm not going to give you the whole list either, I think you get the idea.
Correction!
But these tags are in no way intended for graphic formatting of HTML text. And no! Boom, in the trap, like bruises (I'll stop being a smart ass, I said myself on this same blog in 2015 that the <strong> and <b> were well supported for their graphic layout). Well, actually, everyone uses these tags to format graphically, but that's the problem: It's a default formatting that is currently assigned to them, or all mail clients and browsers seem unanimous on the display (and it's good for us I want to say!). However, when we consult the definitions and uses of each of these tags on the w3schools site, we can see that these tags have a "semantic" function.
Definition of these tags
Defines a piece of text in another tone or "mood".
Represents a text that must be "stylistically" (thank you Google Translate) different from the normal text, such as misspelled words.
<strong> Defines an important text.
Defines an underlined text, in the sense of "the emphasis is on..."
Allows you to highlight parts of a text.
Conclusion
So well, the tag can already definitely be removed from the list: its "graphic" support (yellow highlighting in the Stabilo Boss style) is frankly deplorable. That's done. As for the other tags, keep in mind that their vocation is semantic!!! Let's face it, semantics within an emailing can have some useful function (in terms of accessibility for example, but that will be the subject of another article). But if it is only a graphic layout, prefer the use of a good old <span> with the corresponding CSS property(ies): font-weight, font-style, text-decoration, background-color. Because if the rendering does not pose any problem for the moment, perhaps the graphic layout of these elements could change in the future.
Driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinggggggg! End of the course! This is the RECREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!
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