Re: Brainstorming - abbreviations

Colin Lieberman wrote:
> 
> I know some folks oppose the xhtml 2 plan to get rid of <acronym>, but
> are two tags really necessary?
> 
> I think more useful would be an attribute to <abbr> that indicates to
> user agents whether the abbreviation is meant to be spoken as initials
> or as a word. There could be an additional optional attribute for some
> other pronunciation:

What is the advantage of getting rid of <acronym> and replacing it with
an attribute on another element, especially when most people don't know
the difference between abbreviations and acronyms anyway?

I don't really have an opinion either way when it comes to keeping vs.
removing <acronym>, but I think adding extra attributes muddies the
semantic waters a little.

> <abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium" type="initial">W3C</abbr>
> 
> <abbr title="Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers
> and Humans Apart" type="word">CAPCHA</abbr>
> 
> <abbr title="Structured Query Language" type="custom"
> pronounce="sequel">SQL</abbr>

I object to a "pronounce" attribute, on the grounds that I say "SQL" as
initials. :)  To make the point more general -- whilst such an attribute
might be useful for screenreaders to some extent, different people say
things different ways.  If one website uses "sequel" and one uses "ess
cue ell", I think that would be confusing.

Andrew Sidwell

Received on Friday, 16 March 2007 08:37:32 UTC