If you find yourself torturing your head about whether to use elements or attributes, then you're attempting to use a markup language as a general-purpose data representation format, something it wasn't designed for.
SGML and XML are for text, optionally marked up with tags/elements. Attributes are for data about element presentation, and not intended to be displayed directly. It's as simple as that.
SGML and XML are for text, optionally marked up with tags/elements. Attributes are for data about element presentation, and not intended to be displayed directly. It's as simple as that.