- From: Charles F. Munat <chas@munat.com>
- Date: Sat, 18 Nov 2000 11:53:35 -0800
- To: "'Al Gilman'" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>, "'WAI Interest Group \(E-mail\)'" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sigh. I guess I should clearly state when my posts are tongue-in-cheek. Still, Al's was a fascinating (and eloquent) reply (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2000OctDec/0358.html). If we're going to use <abbr> and <acronym> interchangeably, why not just drop <acronym>? Why clutter the language with superfluous elements? This, of course, is the same argument I make for carefully defining acronym in the lexicon. If a word in English has an exact synonym, then what good is it? It's just bulking up an already bulky language. So if the etymology of acronym is "tall name" (or more likely, "name made from the tips of words"), who cares? A more important question is, Is it useful? To call HTML an acronym rather than (more generically) an abbreviation tells me that it is created from "the first (or first few) letters of a series of words" (Webster's), but so what? The same could be said of etc. or i.e. Are these acronyms? How does it benefit us to so label them? Does anyone really care *how* an abbreviation is formed? On the other hand, defining acronym to be a word (pronounceable and, preferably, with an established meaning) created from the first few letters of other words, *does* serve a useful function. How else to describe adequately an abbreviation such as MADD, so pregnant with meaning? Tell me it's an acronym and I get it: it's not just M-A-D-D, it's MAD, as in these women are ANGRY. To define acronym merely as "initials" leaves us without a word to accurately describe this distinction. The National Organization of Women wants equality for women NOW. BASIC is an easy to learn first computer language. And so on. Here is where the usefulness of this word lies. Why throw it away? So I say, when coding in HTML, use <abbr> and let's just drop <acronym>. When speaking English, however, make every word count. Use acronym solely to refer to abbreviations which create pronounceable and meaningful words. And now, if you'll all just listen to me, the problem is solved! Charles F. Munat, Seattle, Washington P.S. Hey! How about this: we'll define a new tag instead. Example: <abbr title="Mister">Mr.</abbr> <acronym title="Mothers Against Drunk Driving">MADD</acronym> <initials title="Hypertext Markup Language">HTML</initials> What do you say?
Received on Saturday, 18 November 2000 14:48:13 UTC