Should have or should have ?

Question

I\'m reading Mark Pilgirm\'s \"Dive into HTML5\" and in the semantics section, it talks about how HTML5 introduces the

and

Answer 1

The HTML documentation tends to use sections only inside articles. It seems to suggest that you should always use an

and use each

for, well, a section of that article. The example they give involves apples:

 

  
Apples
  
Tasty, delicious fruit!
 
 
The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree.
 

  
Red Delicious
  
These bright red apples are the most common found in many supermarkets.
 
 

  
Granny Smith
  
These juicy, green apples make a great filling for apple pies.
 

I don't see many examples where a

is not contained by an

, but an

can contain another

within it, such that a blog would be represented by an article, and then a comment to that blog would be represented by another article inside the parent article. So, that looks like the direction you should be headed.

So, continuing from the apples example: If you wanted to allow users to comment on each type of apple, then in that case you would have an article inside a section, which would still be inside an article.

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After looking more into it and thinking harder about it, this is the generalization I've come up with:

Using articles should be reserved for "posts" such as a blog, a topic (and each of its subsequent posts), comments, etc. Anything which can have an author should be using an

element.

Using sections should be reserved for separating sections of your website, such as an introduction (to what your site might be about), some news articles, or an area within an article used for comments. Anything which is a "section" of something (doesn't really have an author).