[whatwg] W3C compatibility

David Latapie david at empyree.org
Mon Feb 12 08:40:54 PST 2007


Hi,

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:20:50 +0000, Benjamin Hawkes-Lewis wrote:
> David Latapie wrote:
> 
>> The rationale was that the difference between <abbr> and <acronym> is 
>> presentational. 
> 
> Hmm. Maybe it could be described as presentational, I'm not sure. I
> thought the rationale was authors don't understand what acronyms are
> because Miriam-Webster's definition is so misleading. <duck/>
> 
>> Consequently, what about a microformat?
> 
> Hmm.
> 
> <span class="ex-acronym">CERN</span>
> <abbr title="Federal Bureau of Investigation"
> class="initialism">FBI</abbr> 
> <abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration"
> class="acronym">NASA</abbr>
> <abbr title="Lieutenant" class="contraction">Leut.</abbr>
> 
> Any others?

Why do you use both <span class="ex-acronym"> and <abbr 
class="acronym">?

The way I see it

Abbreviation
	Hyperonym (superset) for initialisms and acronyms
Acronym
	Abbreviation that you can pronounce as a word (NASA)
Initialism
	Abbreviation that you can spell letter-by-letter (FBI)

Some others consider "abbreviation" is not a superset, but what you 
call "contraction". I couls very be both (superset plus subset), this 
happens often.

There is also the term "alphabetism".

The only thing for sure is that there is a strong disagreement on the 
terminology.
-- 
</david_latapie>             U+0F00
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