RE: How to put an annotation in HTML?

I have long thought that a clean and simple method for identifying terms in HTML that are instances of a specific ontology would be a very valuable adjunct to the growth of the Semantic Web. A number of years ago I proposed an approach to a solution I called Instance Markup Language (1) which gained no traction. The consensus at the time was that RDFa would provide the solution for this need and also that it wasn't really important because the great bulk of instance data would come from large data bases and not from HTML. I don't think RDFa has in fact provided a "clean and simple" way to identify specific terms in HTML text and link those terms to classes or properties in a specific ontology. I never thought my proposed approach was exactly right, but I did have hope it would inspire someone come forward with a similar, but cleaner, way to do this. Even though the subject still occasionally come up, after all these years it's pretty clear I was wrong about this being an important component of Semantic Web technology.
 
(1) http://mysite.verizon.net/jflynn12/IML.htm 
 
From: Denny Vrandečić [mailto:denny.vrandecic@wikimedia.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 1:59 PM
To: semantic-web at W3C
Subject: How to put an annotation in HTML?
 
Sorry, probably a stupid questions:
 
Let us say, I have some HTML like this...
 
<p>It is well known, that Springfield has mild summers and short, but hard winters.</p>

 
And now, for example in order to simplify extraction, I want to annotate Springfield with an URI, maybe like this, to make sure that the computer understands I mean the Springfield in Massachusetts: 
 
<p>It is well known, that <span about="http://sws.geonames.org/4951788/">Springfield</span> has mild summers and short, but hard winters.</p>
 
How do I actually do that?
 
Mind you, I don't want to add whole triples, but just annotate the HTML and say "this element refers to the following URI".
 
Cheers,
Denny
 
 
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