RE: ABBR vs. ACRONYM

Hi all,

An abbreviation and an acronym are not the same thing and they should not
made a mistake neither they can be used in the same way in HTML.

As Charles has explained: "Basically, Acronym is greek, and means
something made from initial letters and abbreviation is french and means
something that has been shortened."

With the exception that in Spanish the word " abreviatura" comes from Latin:
"abbreviatura".

Their purpose is that the screen reader makes a correct reading of the
sentence in which is included the acronym or the abbreviation, for example:

NATO is an acronym and I understand that in HTML it should appear this way:
<ACRONYM lang = it is TITLE = " NATO ">OTAN </ACRONYM> or, <ACRONYM lang =
it is TITLE = efe be i: Brigada de Investigación Criminal">FBI </ACRONYM> as
it is wanted that it is pronounced by the screen reader, that which will
depend from the culture to which goes the page.

But " Mr." it is an abbreviation so, it can only be used in a way:
<ABBR TITLE = Mister">Mr.</ABBR>

regards,
Emmanuelle Gutiérrez y Restrepo
http://sidar.org
emmanuelle@sidar.org

----- Original Message -----
From: Kynn Bartlett <kynn-hwg@idyllmtn.com>
To: Ann Navarro <ann@webgeek.com>
Cc: Gregory J. Rosmaita <unagi69@concentric.net>; WAI Interest Group
Emailing List <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2000 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: ABBR vs. ACRONYM


> At 12:26 PM 2/20/2000 , Ann Navarro wrote:
> >Hmmm.   Would it be detrimental to encourage treatment of either as
acronym
> >since some user agents apparently support acronyms where abbr is less
> >supported?
>
> I'd say that if we can't figure out why someone would want to use
> one or the other -- if they're effectively equivalent, do the same
> things, and can be used for the same types of content -- then one
> of them is redundant and should be tossed.
>
> Are they both redundant?  What does ABBR or ACRONYM do that SPAN
> with TITLE doesn't?  Would it be better to have a more generalized
> way of indicating alternate/expanded content for text, such as
> SPAN/TITLE, rather than the confusing specialized forms of ABBR/TITLE
> and ACRONYM/TITLE?
>
> I say confusing because obviously there's some disagreement -- even
> if in my own head -- about when they should be used, and specialized
> because they don't present a generic way to provide alternatives
> for textual content, but rather only in certain cases.
>
>
> --
> Kynn Bartlett                                    mailto:kynn@hwg.org
> President, HTML Writers Guild                    http://www.hwg.org/
> AWARE Center Director                          http://aware.hwg.org/
>

Received on Sunday, 20 February 2000 16:21:30 UTC