- From: Laurens Holst <lholst@students.cs.uu.nl>
- Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2005 17:30:19 +0100
- To: Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor@Rhul.Ac.Uk>, www-style@w3.org
Philip TAYLOR wrote: > > And for foreign-word, use <dfn>... > > But unless I am mistaken, <dfn> is intended to be used > "to mark up terms which are used for the first time" [*]; > since most Latin phrases need no glossing (for an > educated audience, at least), I would have thought that > <dfn> was /in/appropriate unless it is really to > be followed by a definition ... Well, in common typography the italics on e.g. foreign or technical words is used to indicate the term is unknown, after which the definition usually follows. The succeeding instances of the term aren't rendered in italics, which is probably what the designers had in mind when creating this tag (and probably the best method to follow when creating markup :)). But you shouldn't take it too strictly (as-in only on the first instance). If you really want to let the following occurances of the terms show up in italics as well, I think it is better to use <dfn> for the job than say, a <span>, or worse, <em>, which is just wrong. > [*] http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/wilbur/phrase/dfn.html It would be better to quote the HTML specification :): http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1 "Indicates that this is the defining instance of the enclosed term." ~Grauw -- Ushiko-san! Kimi wa doushite, Ushiko-san nan da!!
Received on Friday, 18 February 2005 16:31:08 UTC