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ChangeProposals/subhead
Subhead Element
Summary
Add a <subhead> element to identify multiple subheadings, such as subtitles, alternative titles, taglines, and bylines.
Contents
Rationale
Real world examples gathered on the WHATWG wiki reflect the usefulness of an element to signify a subheading, subtitle, tagline and byline.
As a child of a heading
<h1>Dr. Strangelove <subhead>Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb</subhead></h1>
As a sibling of a header
<h1>Syrian town of Qusair falls to Hezbollah in breakthrough for Assad</h1> <subhead>Rebels confirm they have pulled out of strategic town after three-week siege by Lebanese militia</subhead>
Difference from <hgroup>
Unlike the <hgroup> element, the <subhead> element does not force a grouping pattern upon the markup where none previously existed. And unlike <hgroup>, <subhead> addresses scenarios where a subtitle or byline element does not immediately follow the heading element.
Difference from <aside> and <small>
The <subhead> element is neither an inline or sectioning aside. Unlike <small>, it does not represent a side-comment or “small print”, like copyright and legal text. Unlike <aside>, it does not represent a section of tangentially related content to the title.
Details
- Add the subhead element to HTML5.
Impact
Positive Effects
- <subhead> provides authors with a more flexible element to mark up exisiting content structures.
- <subhead> provides a clear semantic structure to convey differences in content to users.
- <subhead> does not require taglines, bylines, subtitles etc. to be marked up as <hx> headings, avoiding potentially confusing scenarios.
Negative Effects
Conformance Classes Changes
- The use of subline will be conforming.
Risks
- current advice in tutorials and books will require modification
References
See more examples of subheadings in the wild from Apple, MTV, The Christian Science Monitor, etc.