[whatwg] [web-apps] 2.7.8 The i element

[Lachlan Hunt]

Ian Hickson wrote:
> Is there any advantage to marking up people's names?

The only reason I have ever marked up any name is for linking to their 
home page or other page about them like this:

   <a href="http://www.hixie.ch/">Ian Hickson</a> said <q>Hello</q>

I see little reason to add specific elements for this purpose to a 
general purpose markup language like HTML.

> Maybe we should just let ship names be marked up by <i>

Perhaps.  it's been argued many times before that i is the most suitable 
element to use for such purposes; but then again, italics for ship names 
is merely a typographical convention and the i element is as meaningless 
as span.

However in the absense of a more semantic element, making use of a 
non-semantic element with the desired with the desired visual rendering 
to convey some form of semantics to the reader is sometimes acceptable.

> and say that <cite> can be used for any reference to a publication,

Agreed, but...

> including those that aren't really citations ("my favourite book
> is <cite>...</cite>").

I think it should be limited to cases where it really is a citation.  In 
that case, it would probably be better to mark that up as:

   My favourite book is <a href="urn:isbn:0-735-71245-X">Eric Meyer on
   CSS</a>.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
http://GetFirefox.com/     Rediscover the Web
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