What Does Semantic Element Mean?
A semantic element is an element of code that uses words to clearly represent what that element contains, in human language. For practical purposes, many of those researching semantic elements are looking at English language words used for the purposes of semantic labeling.
Techopedia Explains Semantic Element
One of the most prominent examples of semantic elements is the HTML 5 programming language used to create Web pages. The original HTML had a number of semantic elements such as “link” and “img,” but also other elements that were non-semantic: “div” and “span” really do not tell the user what the element is, nor does something like “a” or “tr.” The non-semantic elements do not describe their contents in human language in the tags that developers use to implement them.
HTML 5 includes additional semantic elements new to HTML such as:
- article
- detail
- figure
- footer
- header
- main
- mark
- section
- summary
The trend toward semantic code is meant to make it easier to read the source code of a page or project.
