I am making a website with personal articles. The body of my articles is a basic div
containing paragraphs, but recently I found it useful to use some spa
It’s fine if no other text-level element is appropriate in your case.
You can check their purposes in the usage summary: Does it represent a hyperlink, stress emphasis, importance, a side comment, …? If the answer is no to all candidates, go with "Other", i.e., the span
element.
div
and span
elements don’t represent anything, they are meaningless elements to be used in cases where no other element is appropriate. So adding/removing div
/span
elements would never change the semantics of the document (unless meaningful attributes, like lang
, were used).
There is nothing wrong with using a span element inside of a div element. It is absolutely valid. It will have no negative impact on search engine optimization.
div elements are block elements and span elements are inline elements. Inline elements can be placed inside of block elements. The opposite is what you want to avoid: Do not put div elements inside span elements.