I’ve been reading up on semantic HTML as a means of improving accessibility and SEO, but I’m still learning about the implications of semantic HTML.
One question I have is whether there’s any point to making sure that semantic HTML is used as much as possible in post content.
Example:
I have a post type for research projects. The write-up for a single research project can have any number of abbreviations for academic credentials, prefixes and suffixes (e.g., Mr., Sr., or Jr.), diseases, organizations, technology (e.g., MRI), etc. It may also have references to other dates, such as when a past study was done. It will certainly have a date for when the research project was published on the website.
Here are a few examples that have made me wonder about using semantic HTML in the past:
- A date range, like "2020 – 2022"
- The presentation of ordinal numbers such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd,…
- Repeated abbreviations, such as referring to someone as always Dr. Brown.
In such a case, should I be stickler about making sure that all abbreviations are wrapped in <abbr> tags, all dates in <time> tags, date ranges are spelled out (e.g., "<time datetime="2020">2020</time> to <time datetime="2022">2022</time>", not "2020 – 2022"), ordinal numbers are spelled out or they also use <abbr> tags, etc.?