// References / HTML STRONG and EM Tags

The <strong> Tag has the same virsual effect as the <b> Tag.

<strong> vs <b>

<strong> is considered to me more semantically correct, then the use of <b> tags.

The simple answer would be to use <b> if you want a pure virsual effect, but use <strong> when you want something to have semantic meaning.

Example:

<strong>strong Text</strong>

It is recommended to use <strong> and <em> instead of <b>, consider the below example.

I <em>may</em> want to buy the update.

The website was <strong>awfully</strong> flawed, it had <em>several</em> security risks.

The above might not be perfect examples, but it should be enough to convince you, that there both are times where you would want a word to be strongly emphasized, or less emphasized using <em>.

As far as i'm concerned, there is no right or wrong in this regard, it will be "up to the speaker", or in this case the webdesigner, or writer of a given article / text, where to place the weight on the words. Lets take one last example.

<em>Note:</em> Don't emphasize to much, that way nothing will apear to be emphasized.

Generally anyone will know when to use emphasized text. To simply use it, where you normally put the weight on your words, is a good rule, and rarely needs to be corrected.