HTML Basics: Highlight in bold • bolded words • emphasize or bold text

STRONG and B are inline elements that do not generate an automatic line break.

The output of the two HTML tags, strong and b (bold), is usually displayed in the same way by the web browser. By default, both HTML elements display the text in bold. However, there is an important difference between them.

In contrast to the B tag, the HTML STRONG tag has a semantic meaning, i.e. a content-related meaning. Text marked up with <strong> is important and is strongly emphasized. Important text starts with <strong> and has to be closed with </strong>.

Emphasized text is usually printed in bold. However, it is not sure that text marked with strong will be printed in bold in every browser.

The HTML B tag always displays text in bold. Boldfaced text starts with <b> and has to be closed with </b>. It is used if you want to highlight text visually using bold type but do not want to emphasize it semantically.

Important text is created with the <strong> tag.

<strong>This text is especially important.</strong>

<b>This text is printed in bold type.</b>

Avoid double markups such as

<strong><em>This emphalized text is important.</em></strong>

<em><strong>This important text is emphasized.</strong></em>

The STRONG tag has a higher relevance than the EM tag. So it's better to use <i> instead of <em> if particularly important text should be displayed in bold and italics. This is the best variant to use:

<strong><i>This text in italics is important.</i></strong>

<strong><b>This text in bold type is important.</b></strong>

<b><strong>This important text is displayed bold.</strong></b>

Such constructions may be considered to be spam.