Facebook’s HTML and Twitter Bootstrap HTML (before v3) both use the <i> tag to display icons.
However, from the HTML5 spec:
The I element represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood,
or otherwise offset from the normal prose, such as a taxonomic
designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another
language, a thought, a ship name, or some other prose whose typical
typographic presentation is italicized.
Why are they using <i> tag to display icons? Isn’t it a bad practice? Or am I missing something here?
I am using span to display icons and it seems to be working for me until now.
Update:
Bootstrap 3 uses span for icons. Official Doc.
Bootstrap 5 is back to i Official doc