>semantic markup is optional, but definetly helps break up a sea of divs, and is good for people who use screen readers
Amen for the "optional" part.
Designers who don't really understand programming, reusability etc had this fad in the mid-2000s were they made "semanticness" some kind of holy grail, as if an html pages were meant to be data abstraction/interchange formats.
I definitely fell victim to this - I would still aim to be as semantic to the data as possible but don't lose much time/sleep over it - especially when the last point has been very true in my experience.
Amen for the "optional" part.
Designers who don't really understand programming, reusability etc had this fad in the mid-2000s were they made "semanticness" some kind of holy grail, as if an html pages were meant to be data abstraction/interchange formats.