[seanwilson]

This is still adding wrapper elements to get the layout you want. Even if you can force yourself to come up with some vague semantics behind the wrapper elements (that you wouldn't have otherwise added), I don't see how it's much better than using a generic tag and it shows you need to modify HTML to modify the presentation in practice.

Visual design involves a lot of grouping and aligning elements, and there isn't always semantic reasons for it. Grouping is usually best done in the HTML, so it's hard keep this part of the visual design out of your HTML.

[matt_kantor]

Presumably there's some natural semantic relationship between the elements if you're going for that kind of visual layout (and even blind users might benefit from encoding that relationship in the DOM), but I don't necessarily disagree with your overall point.

Sparingly-used non-semantic grouping elements only inserted when absolutely necessary is a pretty different story from the "layers and layers of wrapper elements" that the article mentions, though.

---

> you need to modify HTML to modify the presentation in practice

If you're e.g. grouping together content that was previously unstructured, arguably that's a semantic change as well as a presentational one.