As the author, I think we're pretty much on the same page. My example of ``span6`` is from the Twitter Bootstrap (which is also available as Less).

I don't think tools like Less and Sass can save us from this decision, though. You can write hundreds of rules to handle different configurations of HTML elements and remain completely semantic, but eventually you'll have the same configuration in two places where you want them to appear different. Then you have the decision of giving one of them an ID or giving them classes and those have to be semantic (and custom to your site, requiring learning from future devs) or generic and breaking the "semantic all the things!!!" rule.

People are trying to figure this out. Semantic.gs is a great example of that. I just don't see, in our current browser, markup, and styles situation, a way to avoid generic classes that's still new-developer-friendly.