RE: acronym and abbreviation markup - insert full stops??

I really think we have to ignore semantics and look at bugs in IE here -
IE does not correctly display tooltips for <abbr> but does for <acronym>

However XHTML 2 does not have <acronym> in the language definition but
does have <abbr>
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/WD-xhtml2-20040722/elements.html#a_elements),
but that's in the future.

In order to get tooltips to display correctly then <acronym> is the only
practicable method we have in our armoury, an we should get the thing to
work and not bother about the precise distinction.

As for full stops - this is a matter for the organisation - how they
call themselves. It may matter to speech readers, though, how they
phrase their output.

John

John Colby 
Lecturer, Department of Computing, The Business School,
Room F328a, Feeney Building, University of Central England,
Franchise Street, Perry Barr, Birmingham B42 2SU
Tel: +44 (0) 121 331 6937
Essential Website - http://essential.tbs.uce.ac.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Christophe Strobbe
Sent: 10 October 2005 09:06
To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Subject: Re: acronym and abbreviation markup - insert full stops??


Hi David and all,

At 08:12 10/10/2005, David Woolley wrote:
<blockquote>

 > For example <acronym>B.B.C</acronym> for BBC.

To re-raise an old chestnut, BBC is not an acronym in the British
English definition of acronym.
</blockquote>

My own searches in British English dictionaries [1] showed that "the 
British English definition of acronym" does not exist. Most say that 
acronyms are "usually" pronounced as a word and add a reference to 
"initialism", but if "initialism" is not in the dictionary, the
definition 
of acronym does not say anything about pronunciation (thereby implicitly

blurring the distinction between acronym and initialism).

Regarding the insertion of full stops, my advice is to consult an 
up-to-date dictionary, just as for other issues of orthography.


[1] 
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-gl/2005JulSep/att-0851/Abbre
viationAcronym.html

Regards,

Christophe Strobbe

-- 
Christophe Strobbe
K.U.Leuven - Departement of Electrical Engineering - Research Group on 
Document Architectures
Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 - 3001 Leuven-Heverlee - BELGIUM
tel: +32 16 32 85 51
http://www.docarch.be/ 


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Received on Monday, 10 October 2005 12:18:06 UTC