HTML doesn’t provide a huge number of elements for us to work with. The selection available is more like that of a corner store than a Walmart.

We have paragraphs, lists, and headlines but we don’t have events, news stories, or recipes. HTML gives us an element for marking up a string as an abbreviation, but it doesn’t give us an element for marking up a number as a price.

Clearly, this limitation hasn’t been a show-stopper; just look at the amazing variety of websites out there. Even though HTML might not provide a specific element for marking up a particular piece of content, it provides just enough flexibility to be “good enough.”

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, HTML is the worst form of markup except all the others that have been tried.