- From: Katie Haritos-Shea <kshea@apollo.fedworld.gov>
- Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:52:10 -0400
- To: "1-W3C-WAI Interest Group" <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, "Al Gilman" <asgilman@iamdigex.net>
You are right on the money, Al, as always............................Katie -----Original Message----- From: w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Al Gilman Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2001 11:51 AM To: w3c-wai-ig@w3.org Subject: punctuation, code, and email subject lines There is a fairly simple, technical mechanism that contributes to Jim and Jamal having different perceptions of Jim's subject line. This is that Jamal was perhaps reading the subject lines for his new mail with punctuation suppressed. So the subject was "!important" for Jim, which was clearly in code. He knew enough to ask the question about the precedence that is invoked by the bang-important mark in CSS code, so he didn't perceive that others might not understand the reference. However, in Jamal's mailbox, the subject came across as "important" without the initial exclamation point. This is an entirely different kettle of fish. Dumb even for contemporary spammers. Everyone agrees that in principle, subject lines should be a clear statement of the subject of the post. What is going on here is we are discovering the technicalities involved in achieving this content purpose using text. The fact is that for reading the summaries of what is in one's inbox, many speech users will have punctuation turned off. So using text that depends on punctuation to indicate that it is code is not safe if you want these users to understand. In the mantra "write it down, spell it out," spelling it out can be read narrowly to mean use whole words rather than acronyms. However this example can also serve as a mnemonic for the avoidance of code wherever possible. If you have to use code, announce the code in plain natural language. At least in email subject headers. Al
Received on Wednesday, 11 April 2001 12:48:13 UTC