[whatwg] the cite element

The level of surprise of an article cited as a book is far smaller than a
real author looking like a fictitious person, as in the default rendering of

	<CITE >Aristotle</CITE > said.
Not everybody is an expert in scholarly style guides but most readers feel
the difference between direct speech and indirect speech.
You can, of course, say 
	It was not <EM >Plato</EM >, it was <EM >Aristotle</EM >!
but this kind of emphasis is rarely needed and the interpretation of the
rendering is obvious from the context in this case.
I contend that citing articles from periodicals is not well supported,
starting with the problem of lack of support in the NID urn:ISSN.  However,
formal citations are not inserted into running text, which is what the CITE
element in principle is for.  They are set aside as footnotes or endnotes in
order to keep the text readable.  There is nothing wrong with the default
rendering of the article title in running text where symbolic bibliography
references are not used, e.g. because the text is for the average reader.
IMHO,
Chris

Received on Thursday, 4 June 2009 10:53:44 UTC