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email comment from jennifer sutton: Since HTML5 is still in development, it's sometimes hard (for me, anyway) to know where to look. I'm referring to 4.5.8 in the spec. I was trying to catch up on the use of DL since it's changed in HTML5. So, I read this: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/grouping-content.html#the-dl-element Even though its usage has changed, the use case I was looking at is still using it incorrectly, so I'm confident, there. What I found confusing is that the spec. says that DL should not be used for dialog. At the same time, it says it can be used for questions and answers. Doesn't dialog typically consist of questions and answers? I don't think I'm the only one who's still a bit confused. You probably saw this post on HTML5 Doctor, when it first went up in 2010, but boy have there been a lot of comments on it, and they're still going. You may not have seen them. http://html5doctor.com/the-dl-element/
I believe the key to differentiating what is appropriate or not in this case is the following statement: > "Within a single dl element, there should not be more than one dt element for each name." I believe a Q&A such as one found in an FAQ would be appropriate use of a <dl> because you would not have the same question (`<dt>`) twice. In the case of a dialog, there is a high probability that any given speaker, signified by a `<dt>`, would be used multiple times. Also, why a dialog might consist of questions and answers, not all dialogs do.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the Editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the Tracker Issue; or you may create a Tracker Issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: agree with Comment 1