Phrasal elements are allowed *anywhere* text is valid. This can be validated with the w3c validator using <code> within an <h3>.

Also in RSS readers, HTML tags in titles/subjects are not supported.

Yes, hence the need for a plain-text version of the title used for links, rdf, and anywhere else ...

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not buying. ;-)

1. English grammar requires a title within a title to be emphasized, in XHTML we use <cite> for this. Eg "Taff Reviews <cite>Lord of the Rings</cite>".

2. Accessibility standards require that the first use of an acronym or abbreviation be tagged with ...

In version 1.0, XHTML phrase elements such as <code>, <cite>, <abbr>, etc, are mis-encoded prior to rendering, eg
s/<code>/<code>/

The offending code:
$entry['title'] = htmlspecialchars($entry['title']);

is in include/function_entries.inc.php on approx line 927 (my working file isn't clean ...