Is it bad practise to use the <b> tag? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicates:
Is it ok to use <strong> in place of <b> blindly ?
What's the difference between <b> and <strong>, <i> and <em>?

If so why? I have been told by two developers I do free lance work for, not to use the b tag and instead to use strong. But neither have been able to tell me why exactly.

I rather use b since it's faster to write unless there is a specific reason I shouldn't.

Answer 1

<strong> means strong emphasis. The idea is that when using a different medium (e.g., text-to-speech), you can express strong emphasis through changing the tone.

<b> means bold. That makes no sense outside of screen display, and more importantly, doesn't explain why something is bold.

Answer 2

HTML5 gives the <b> tag a new, semantic usage:

The b element represents a span of text to be stylistically offset from the normal prose without conveying any extra importance, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is boldened.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#the-b-element

<strong> is different:

The strong element represents strong importance for its contents.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/text-level-semantics.html#the-strong-element