HTML5 Killed the “big” Tag?

Ah, the evolution of technology, where, things gets better and better.

HTML5 chopped off the big tag, yet it retained the small tag. How consistent.

Instead of “big”, you are supposed to use “em” or “strong” or “b”? But “big” carries a sematic that's not one of emphasis, strong, warning, bold. If you are going to argue that HTML should be used for semantic markup, then please chop off {b, i, u} off the earth.

When would big be meaningful? For example, you want to show Chinese characters big, so user can see the detail.

Another reason is that sometimes i want to make a title larger, but semantically i don't want it to be a header such as {h1, h2, h3}. For example, a Tag cloud, fashionable around 2007.

Sure one can resort to CSS, for example: <span style="font-size:4em">☠</span>, but “big” would carry with it a precise and semantic info. After all, “small” and “b” are there too.

When you get deep into a technology, often you find many oddities, whose reasoning are buried in obscurity, or simply idiotic.

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