Re: Brainstorming - abbreviations

Geoffrey Sneddon wrote:
> Surely this is truly an aural CSS issue, not an HTML one? We already  
> have the "speak" property, and the "spell-out" value reads it how  
> letter by letter.

   Agreed. CSS could have an aural property to handle whether or not the
term is spelled out verbally or pronounced.

   Adding a bunch of attributes with values like "initials" and
"spelled-out" will just be confusing to most web developers, and it's
hard enough getting lazy web developers to use <abbr> and <acronym> on
their abbreviations and acronyms anyways.

> I do, however, agree that there is little point in having <abbr> and  
> <acronym> – the difference between the two isn't completely clear,  
> and is often got wrong.

   I think that has more to do with previous versions of Internet
Explorer supporting only <acronym> and not <abbr> than people getting
the two confused. Quite frankly, anyone who didn't flunk high school
English should know the difference.

> UAs for the sake of backwards compatibility
> should support both, but I see little reason in retaining this  
> unclarity in a future spec.

   For backwards compatibility, it should be in the specification, but
it can be deprecated. I think the argument should be about its
deprecation and not its elimination.

   Personally, if there's an <acronym> element, I'd probably use it for
acronyms, but it's not going to break my heart if it gets phased out.

Received on Friday, 16 March 2007 10:48:29 UTC