Re: Adapting Text Units: Spaces, paragraphs, and ems

The paragraphs one is tricky but I think it would be testable if it was asking for 2ems (lines) underneath each paragraph.

2. Spacing underneath paragraphs to at least 2 times the font size (2 lines).

(Is the term “below” or “after” better?)

Therefore, the answers for each of Stephen’s questions would be:


  1.  Which paragraph’s font size do I base the spacing on?
A: The one above the space.

  2.  Is it spacing before or after or split between the two?
A: After only.

  3.  Does a heading or sub-heading count as a paragraph?  Seems like that would be a much bigger distinguisher so I’m assuming no.
A: No. I assume it is a gap in terms of what users would want though?

  4.  What if a list, block quote, image, or other element breaks up a paragraph?  This becomes an important difference depending on the answers to 1 and 2.
A: Then it is two paragraphs, and it shouldn’t break if you add a margin to the bottom of each paragraph.

  5.  If a paragraph has another visual distinction like a first line indent or border, is the spacing requirement the same?
A: Yes (I assume that is the desired requirement).

The CSS to test it for HTML would simply be:
p {margin-bottom: 2em !important;}

Specifying ‘underneath’ also gets around the collapsing margins aspect of CSS which I’m sure would raise many questions/issues! (That’s where the bottom-margin of one element and the top-margin of next element are not simply added together, it uses the higher value of the two and the rest is ‘collapsed’.)

Stephen wrote:
> In the end though, I’m having a tough time seeing how a test for paragraph spacing could ever really fail in the context of this criterion

I agree, I’m not sure it’s adding anything of value to end users. Not that having lots of spacing between paragraphs is not useful, just that it won’t find many issues.

Cheers,

-Alastair