Setting the Foundations(Chapter 1 of CSS Mastery Advanced Web Standards Solutions)

　　Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns.

　　Microformats are simple conventions for embedding semantics in HTML to enable decentralized development. 

　　Microformats are small patterns of HTML to represent commonly published things like people, events, blog posts, reviews and tags in web pages.