Why does <big> get the short end of the stick? It’s been deprecated while <small> gets to continue.

I know X/HTML purists would say none of the ‘phrase element’ tags are needed. Sure, all of the same effects can be done in CSS with styles attached to <span> (or you can make a site entirely in <div> tags), but there are some good arguments for simple emphasis markups like <small>, <i>, <strong>, <code>, etc.:

• They’re semantically rich and descriptive. Even <b> and <i>, which often get little respect, have appropriate uses when you just mean to bold or italicize something. They are exclamations in a way, although <strong> and <em> (emphasis) are even moreso.
• They’re useful for people who don’t know HTML, but still want to style their text in a blog comment or forums post. Most people understand small tags like <b> = bold. <big> and <small>, they’re self-explanatory.
• For web designers, it’s easy and efficient to allow the simpler markup tags on input. We can filter out all of the attributes and have one less worry about XSS & injection exploits. Don’t make us resort to BBCode (*ugh*).
• They’re convenient and they don’t harm anyone. They’re warm and fuzzy. I really cannot fathom what <big> did to get itself booted from the HTML club. If it was too large I could understand, or if it annoyingly blinked or scrolled like a marquee, sure. But it’s just a little more emphasis than strong.

Usually I’m on the side of standards, but on this one little (<big>) thing: I’m tempted to skip markup validation in order to provide my users with the convenience of an easily recognizable tag.

Note: Of course I can just present the tag to my users and convert it to <span class=”big”> but shhhh, I’m trying to make a point here. ;)