Re: use of <mark> to denote notes in quoted text

2013-09-07 22:18, Steve Faulkner wrote:
> I have  been mulling over use of <mark> 
> http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/text-level-semantics.html#the-mark-element to 
> denote notes added to quoted text

What would be the practical impact of such markup? Old browsers ignore 
<mark>, new browsers render it with yellow background. The 
interpretation of the rendering is left to the reader, who has no way of 
knowing why it is highlighted (except for the small fraction of 
HTML-aware readers who peek at the source code).

What HTML5 CR seems to be saying about <mark> inside quotations is that 
it adds highlighting that is not present in the original. You seem to be 
saying that it could (also) indicate text added to the quotation.

Either way, it would be incorrect, and often even illegal, quotation. 
Legal quotation consists of exact copy of a part of some work, with no 
changes except as necessitated by the purpose of quotation and clearly 
indicated as changes. There are conventional ways of indicating changes, 
and HTML markup is not part of such conventions. It is of course 
acceptable to explain changes explicitly in the text, such as "emphasis 
mine" or, more clearly, "emphasis added to the quotation using yellow 
background color", or even "words added to the quotation have been 
indicated using yellow background color". The problem, of course, is 
that <mark> might be rendered in a multitude of ways. The bottom line is 
that changes can be reliably indicated only by using conventional 
devices, like brackets, in the text, not with styling, still less with 
HTML markup, which has no fixed styling.

-- 
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Saturday, 7 September 2013 20:07:09 UTC