HTML is great, anyone can make a website due to the simplicity of marking up a page and the leniency of web browsers. The idea that anyone could be on the lead to the huge growth of the Internet in it's early days with personal pages and static sites popping up everywhere and again now with blogs and wikis.

As the Internet has grown so has it's basis. HTML is much more than what IE or Netscape deem it to be, it has it's own standards, it's own structure and it's own meaning. I'm not talking about the intricate complexities of Microformats, just about POSH.

Plain Old Semantic HTML

POSH encapsulates the best practices of using semantic HTML to author web pages. Semantic HTML is the subset of HTML 4.01 (or XHTML 1.0) elements and attributes that are semantic rather than presentational. The best way to learn and understand POSH is to do it.

POSH has been created to recapture the essence of semantic HTML, the simplicity and the benefits, and be equally simple and memorable.

I like it! When I read about it at Tantek Çelik's blog I was so impressed. The idea is so simple it's brilliant, get people to promote valid, semantic markup again.

So How Do You Get POSH?

The best thing I can do is point you in the direction of the POSH Checklist, but a quick rundown of the methods is:

• Validate!
• Don't use tables, or any HTML, for layout
• Use paragraphs and headings properly
• Eliminate empty anchors
• Use semantic class names

Once you've made your site POSH, the next best thing is to get other people to do the same! So will you make the effort, make your website or blog POSH? It's been around since 1998 (without even realising), so get on board and make the web a better place with POSH