<strong> and <em>

[S.Shady]

is it better to use strong and em instead of b and i or should i use <b> and <i> ?

[Chen]

I think <strong> and <em> are better for the future.

[S.Shady]

ok thanks

[Kings]

<b> and <i> are purely visual, or presentational tags. <em> and <strong> are semantic markup tags.

For example, a blind user browses the web with a screen reader. When the reader comes across an <em> tag, it will pronounce the word(s) differently, i.e with emphasis. When it comes across an <i> tag it doesn't do anything special.

(Have a look at http://www.sitepointforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=123154 for some more information.)

[Faruk]

Also, read the W3C recommendations (ie. the Internet Standards at www.w3.org) on such things.

As Kings said, using <em> and <strong> is doing your markup properly, so that different interpretation methods of your pages will still have the same effect. For that reason, <b> and <i> are deprecated, meaning you should no longer use them in your websites, and by preference update your old pages as well.

It will still be a very long time before <b> and <i> will not function anymore, though, so it's not so much a progression-to-the-future, but rather an accessibility improvement.