[jey]

Sounds like you're confusing Semantic HTML with Semantic Web. "Semantic" HTML is a style of writing HTML where the document exposes the meaningful structure and data in the document instead of the visual layout. The idea is that HTML is just a structured data representation, a la XML, and CSS is then used to transform it into a particular layout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_HTML

[allendoerfer]

You are right, I meant to write "HTML". Nevertheless I question the usefulness of this approach. Semantic XML vs. pragmatic JSON tells a similar story.

Semantic structures are never perfect, because they are not controlled by the recipient, but by the sender. I love the idea, but I think it will never come true. We will always have to mine the data ourselves.

I can see the value of providing semantic markup for screen readers or for some Google SERP extension, but I do not see how semantic class names provide any value at all.

Separation of concerns is a nice saying, but as other comments already mentioned, is just not possible to the full extend yet as CSS and browsers are to limited.

I think we should acknowledge these shortcomings and real world circumstance, do our best to work around them, but in the end just move on and be productive.