Template:Strong/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Strong.
It contains usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original Template page.

Purpose

This template makes it faster and easier to apply the ‎...‎ strong emphasis HTML element to text, and more importantly to indicate to human and bot editors they should not use '''...''' or ‎...‎ typographic boldfacing to replace the intentional and semantically meaningful ‎. Strong emphasis is usually rendered visually in a bold (heavy) typeface by default on graphical browsers, but can be parsed and acted upon in customizable ways with style sheets, apps and text-to-speech screen readers. It is said to be semantic markup, i.e. markup that conveys meaning or context, not just visual appearance. Simple boldfacing is purely typographic and is semantically meaningless. It is most often used for headings, but has a few other uses (such as for book or film titles and the like, which are usually italicized, when they appear in an already-italicized passage). The average reader, and average editor, do not and need not care about this distinction most of the time, but it can be important and editors who understand it can use this template as a baseline insurance against accidental or careless replacement by bots and human editors.

Usage

or, if the text to be emphasized contains an equals sign:

These both render as:

text to be emphasized

This template puts intentional and explicit ‎...‎ (strong emphasis) [X]HTML markup around the text provided as the first parameter. It is safest to always use the |1= syntax.

Optional parameters

Advanced HTML values can be passed through the template to the HTML code:

|class= takes a class name (or multiple class names, separated by commas); adds class="classname[s]" to the HTML code
|style= takes inline CSS input; adds style="CSS directive[s]" to the HTML code
|id= takes a valid, unique HTML id (must begin with an alphabetic letter); adds id="name" to the HTML code
|title= takes text, which cannot be marked up in any way, and displays it as a pop-up "tooltip" when the cursor hovers over the {{strong}} span

Use cases

This template is made to strongly emphasize important words or phrases in a text, in a way that is (unlike simply boldfacing it) semantically meaningful markup. With this technique, the emphasized text strongly stands out from the rest in most if not all visual browsers and some text-to-speech screen readers (which usually ignore purely typographic boldfacing), and can also be parsed by user agents and other software as definitively indicating emphasis, not just some typographic boldface effect for appearance's sake. It should therefore only be used very sparingly in articles to highlight the most important words or phrases in the entire article (and, rarely in encyclopedic writing, to represent strong vocal emphasis). Use of this template has a strong effect on scannability, drawing the eye from elsewhere on the page to words marked up with the template.

Typical uses on Wikipedia:

In the lead section of an article, the article's title and its synonyms should be emphasized with {{strong}}. Example: "The soma, or perikaryon, or cyton, is the bulbous end of a neuron." As of February 2012, this is not yet common, but users should not revert it (nor criticize anyone for not using it).
After the lead, it can be used to highlight crucial terms of importance only slightly secondary to that of the article title and its synonyms. For example, the article on a viral infection might use {{strong}} to highlight the names of two identified strains of the disease in a "Varieties" section, as an aid to scannability.
In unusual cases (most often direct quotations) it is used to represent text that would be strongly emphasized for contextual reasons if the passage were spoken rather than written (e.g., because it indicates shouting).
Outside articles, it should be used (but as of February 2012 isn't yet common) in polls, XfD processes, RfX votes, and similar comments and debates where users indicate that they approve of or disagree with a view or proposal. Example: "Support, because of this and that reasons [...]" or "Oppose, because of this and that reasons [...]".

When this template should not be used

Because {{strong}} is strictly for semantic (meaningful) emphasis, it should not be used for layout, typography conventions and such. In these different cases, bold '''...''' (which resolves to ‎...‎ in the browser or other user agent) should be used instead. It should also not be used when the text to which it is applied is already boldfaced for some other reason (e.g., it is part of a heading); in such cases use {{em}} instead. Avoid using {{strong}} in non-quoted sentences that end in an exclamation point. And it is usually excessive to use it on terms that are already wikilinked, since the link markup acts as a form of emphasis itself.