- From: Jon Hanna <jon@hackcraft.net>
- Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2004 12:26:45 +0100
- To: "w3c-wai-ig@w3.org" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Quoting "Ianl@dyslexic.com" <Ianl@dyslexic.com>: > > Jon Hanna wrote: > > > English punctuation has not changed because of the use of > > electronic media or > > hypertext. > > English punctuation is changing all the time (albeit slowly). Look at > the standard business letter today compared with 50 years ago. The trend has been towards decreasing the number of cases where one uses a punctuation symbol, not increasing. This is > partly governed by the technology available. True, though decreasingly so since the technology is getting better there is less need for us to work for the technology. A good example, though not strictly about punctuation, is how technical limitations made it difficult to put accents on capital letters in French and even handwritten French changed to adapt. Now however accents are beginning to be seen on capitals in French again (this applies to some other accented languages, but not to others - dropping accents on Irish for example would have caused too much ambiguity). Look at the difference > between punctuation and layout as done on a manual typewriter compared > with WP. Exactly. > If the huge revolutions of electronic text, the web and accessibility > haven't brought about any changes in punctuation, perhaps they should. Only if there's something wrong with the punctuation in and of itself. If we have to change punctuation to deal with the web (and you still haven't shown that we do) then the problem lies with the tech. -- Jon Hanna <http://www.hackcraft.net/> "…it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people." - jargon.txt
Received on Wednesday, 23 June 2004 07:26:47 UTC