Re: Question about HTML abbr and acronym tags

Nicholas Shanks wrote:

> This reflects my usage:
> <acronym> Abbreviations that are acronyms (as per previous defn.)
> <abbr class="initialism"> Abbreviations like FBI, BBC
> <abbr class="truncation"> Abbreviations like cont. defn. etc.

You've changed your definitions!  The ones you now use are the ones I 
understand to be most correct English, and appear consistent with the 
OED definition of acronym.

However, you started by saying:

<http://www.w3.org/mid/B9E3D03F-7FD1-4A3C-A552-72ACCCE29E68@nickshanks.com>
* acronym: an abbreviation of a phrase constructed from the initial
* letters of its constituent words.

That makes BBC an acronym, which you also backed up by criticizing the 
BBC for using different capitalization for BBC and Nato.

It's precisely this distinction that causes the confusion with the use 
of the term acronym.

The early parts of 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Acronym_and_initialism&oldid=183223674> 
discuss this quite well.  The early parts are actually exceptionally 
good for a Wikipedia article in terms of citing sources, although it 
degrades towards the end and confuses terms itself.

Note, whilst I agree with Jukka that these terms cause a lot of 
confusion, I don't agree with the principle that there is no use for 
marking up abbreviations.


-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.

Received on Thursday, 10 January 2008 22:11:26 UTC