Semantic Markup and it's Uses

Gone are the days of web pages just presenting information, but rather web pages now have meaning to them. What is meant by this, well semantic markup is what I mean. In days gone by HTML and the tags used by it were used in order to present the information of the website to the user of the site. As the word semantic suggests, these tags now posses a dual function: to present the information as well as give meaning as to the type of information that is being presented.

Whilst semantic markup and it’s effects is not often seen by the user, one of the greatest advantages of semantic markup is making it easier for a webpage to be understood by the browser that is displaying the page, the developers working on / maintaining the page and for the bots of the internet that crawl through webpages attempting to understand what type of content is presented on various pages. These tags also indicate the importance of the data on the webpage.

One of the other advantages of using semantic markup is that it makes it easier to style the website when using JavaScript or CSS. It also makes it easier for a webpage to be displayed on various different platforms, as without semantic markup the purpose and meaning information on the page may be lost when the page is used on an uncommon platform, however with the use of semantics the platform will do it’s best to better understand what is being presented.