- From: Erik Vorhes <erik@textivism.com>
- Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 09:47:47 -0500
On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 3:13 AM, Kristof Zelechovski <giecrilj at stegny.2a.pl> wrote: > The HTML is required to produce a meaningful rendering without CSS. ?The > level of reader surprise at the default rendering of > ? ? ? ?<cite >Aristotle</cite > said > is high and such markup should be verbally deprecated. ?(I agree that it > cannot be technically invalid, of course.) > If I'm reading your message correctly, you assert that the spec's documentation of semantic uses for <cite> must be limited because of how browsers render text within <cite> by default. But the argument in favor of limiting <cite> in the spec. to titles becomes almost immediately problematic. According to many scholarly style guides (e.g., APA, MLA, and Chicago), default browser styles properly italicize <cite>Crime and Punishment</cite>, but they would improperly italicize the title to an article in a periodical. Logically, then, if we are to use default styling as a baseline for the usage of <cite>, the spec. would need to identify which kinds of titles are appropriate to wrap within that element. In addition, I'm skeptical about how much users are surprised when they encounter italicized text. Visually, at least, by default <cite> renders no differently from <em>, so it's not as if italicization is an issue in itself; and judging my some of the seemingly random uses of <em> in the wild, I doubt this is as big an issue as you suggest. So count me as seconding Andrew Hagen's suggestions regarding <cite>. It's too semantically useful an element to preemptively limit its use only to titles. Erik Vorhes
Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 07:47:47 UTC