Style & Emacs Config: A Semantic HTML Reckoning

For years, I’ve been using verbatim emphasis in org-mode to mark files and keyboard strokes, while reserving code emphasis to show function names, variables, and other elements of code. With the reintroduction of <kbd></kbd> tags to the blog yesterday1, I wanted these tags to follow the same logic derived from my usage in org-mode: if I used verbatim in org-mode to indicate keystrokes and filenames, then I should use <kbd></kbd> tags on the blog to indicate the same thing. I explained in a footnote in the post: “The reason I have it different here is because I often talk about files in my posts without referring to code.” That might have been my preference, but it was wrong. We’ll get back to it in a minute. I wanted to get my markdown-exported posts to preserve the verbatim emphasis from org-mode. But Markdown doesn’t distinguish between verbatim and code emphasis in org-mode — it treats both as ``, or <code></code> tags in HTML. So I started looking for a way to fix this. The…