You might of seen these tags marked as "depreciated" in the latest HTML 4.1 standard. However, the footnote warns of depreciation of tags as something like "Depreciated. This indicates that the tag is now better supported using another tag. Note that this tag *might* be dropped in future versions of HTML."
So, the way I read that is that it is depreciate, because they're trying to get you to use style sheets. The general warning of depreciation is that a tag could be dropped in _future_ versions (but not this one) so execrcise caution. I doubt that such common tags, and indeed core HTML tags will be dropped however. That would cause havoc amongst web users, browsers, vendors, authoring tools and the web general. So I think you're safe with those, but the W3 would *prefer* you to use another tag.
- wil
So, the way I read that is that it is depreciate, because they're trying to get you to use style sheets. The general warning of depreciation is that a tag could be dropped in _future_ versions (but not this one) so execrcise caution. I doubt that such common tags, and indeed core HTML tags will be dropped however. That would cause havoc amongst web users, browsers, vendors, authoring tools and the web general. So I think you're safe with those, but the W3 would *prefer* you to use another tag.
- wil