[masswerk]

My reasoning has always been that an article is a separable entity, which can do without the given context. (E.g., you can share it, or you can present multiple of them in varying order.) So a document may have sections, which may include articles, which in turn include sections, like the table of contents, a section of images, etc. So there's no distinctive hierarchy to them, as each may contain the other. (Mind that this is somewhat different from the use of articles in legal documents, which are integral elements of that document and lose meaning, if provided out of context.)

While any such interpretation is somewhat funny in the context of the parent comment, it may still turn out useful. E.g., if we were to scrape any content from an existing site in order to reintegrate it for a relaunch or a similar purpose.

And, as we're at it, a div is really just a technical means for applying something to a group of elements (e.g., in it's a original use, an attribute for centered text presentation), think of it as blocks in programming. Nothing semantic to see here, keep calm and carry on…

BTW, thanks for mentioning the hgroup, which is often overlooked, but really makes sense, when combining headings and subheadings, which are to be understood as a single item (like the head of an article, yes, an article in the common sense).

[bXVsbGVy]

The actual specification of article and section elements in HTML is pretty much what you said.

My issue with them is not with their roles, but with their names. And, from the article and from OP, it seems I'm not the only one. I think "region" as it is used by WAI-ARIA would be a better name. Also something like "contentinfo" instead of "footer". And "complementary" instead of "aside"...

> E.g., if we were to scrape any content from an existing site in order to reintegrate it for a relaunch or a similar purpose.

The spec call this "outline".

Related to divs. I find ironic that making pages with tables were frowned upon 20 years ago, yet it is hot again now, but we are calling them "grids".

They say, the lack of usage of hgroups is due the lack of support by screen readers. Another common use case is <h1>Chapter 1</h1><h2>Foobar</h2>.

[masswerk]

Regarding the table irony, see also the common use of table, table-row, and table-cell display styles for anything but actual tables. ("If I'm using divs, it's fine!") :-)

(Tables should even be more accessible, since there is <th>, both in <thead> and with `scope="row"` for table rows.)

Something, I've been guilty of (sometimes) for emulating hgroup: <h1>Heading<br /><small>Subhead</small></h1>.