The puzzling aspect is that, contrary to what most people would assume, the B, I, EM and STRONG elements all came out under the same version (2.0) of HTML: https://meiert.com/en/indices/html-elements/
> Phrases may be marked up according to idiomatic usage, typographic appearance, or for use as hyperlink anchors.
So the original standard considered both approaches valid, later standards decided that typographic usage was invalid.