Should <acronym> be discouraged?
| scfoulstone wrote: |
| An acronym uses the initial letters of significant words in a phrase. An abbreviation is leaving ending letters off a single word. |
not necessarily as cut and dry as that. as mentioned before, acronyms are a sub-set of abbreviations as well. as for abbreviations, it's not just ending letters...any omission of a part or parts is counted as an abbreviation.
Patrick H. Lauke / webmaster / University of Salford
co-lead: WaSP Accesibility Task Force
take it to the streets ... WaSP Street Team
personal: splintered | photographia | redux
co-author: Web Accessibility - Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance
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Hello all. My name is Mike (or GB) as some call me. I'm brand new here and hopefully I'm not jumping into something I shouldn't be. This board was recommended by Robert Wellock, and he said you folks don't bite.
I have a site I'm working on -- Robert has seen it -- but I need to make some minor fixes before I share it with you all.
I chose this topic to jump in on as I was just dealing with this issue. I chose my own solution and would like to get your feedback. Working on my project is when I discovered this incredible lack of support for <abbr> by MSIE. (What a huge dissapointment, but not a surprise I guess.)
What I did was use <acronym>, for everything. If it was an acronym, an abbreviation, even a deifintion of some obscure phase which didn't fit in either category, I used <acronym>. My logical justification of this is I simply wanted it to work, regardless of what it was being defined or what browser someone was using. In other words using <acronym> and the "Help" cursor in the CSS, I have all items such as this well identified (in all the good browsers) and it at least shows something in MSIE. For me, it was a simple tradeoff. The use of acronym is not accurate in many of instances on my site, but then again, it seems to work and provide the information I want it to.
What is your opinions on this, perhaps, shady move?
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| &gb; wrote: |
| Hello all. My name is Mike (or GB) as some call me. I'm brand new here and hopefully I'm not jumping into something I shouldn't be. This board was recommended by Robert Wellock, and he said you folks don't bite. |
Hi Mike... welcome to the forum! Most of us don't bite! *gnarl*
| &gb; wrote: |
| What I did was use <acronym>, for everything. [...] What is your opinions on this, perhaps, shady move? |
Personally, I think it's not the best of ideas as it comes down to semantics at the end of the day... all acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms... so M$ chose the wrong one to not support really.
There are work-arounds that I've found - I've mentioned them before on the forum. But I choose to mark things up as what I think they should be - either an abbreviation or an acronym and to hell with the support issues.
Jon Gibbins, dotjay.co.uk, accessibility.co.uk wiki.
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