Typographic note on XHTML 2.0 draft: full-stop after section numbers (ISO 2145)

A quick note on an -- in my eyes unfortunate -- choice in the typography
of the XHTML 2 draft on

  http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/

and possibly other W3C documents:

I noticed that you add a full stop after each section number,
as in

  1. Introduction
     1.1. What is XHTML 2?
          1.1.1. Design Aims

As a standards body claiming competence in typography and international
standardization matters, it would certainly look rather good for the W3C
if you respected the very widely used ISO 2145 standard for numbering
sections in written documents. ISO 2145 does not terminate section
numbers with a full stop. In other words, international standard section
numbers according to ISO 2145 look more like

  1  Introduction
     1.1  What is XHTML 2?
          1.1.1  Design Aims

It is customary to separate the section number and the section title
with a slightly larger space, e.g. an em space or two normal interword
spaces.

References:

  - International Standard ISO 2145:1978, Documentation -- Numbering of
    divisions and subdivisions in written documents. International
    Organization for Standardization, Geneva.

  - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_2145

Markus

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain

Received on Tuesday, 5 July 2005 15:22:20 UTC