Actually it's not a pointless distinction. If you care about the integrity of your string, you'd better use text nodes with CDATA, not attributes, because of the dreaded obscure XML feature called "Attribute Value Normalization".

XML just tempts you to use attributes to represent strings, then kicks you in the ass when you least expect it by corrupting your data unexpectedly and unfairly but with full legal authority of the xml standard itself.

I wrote about it in this other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26122107