[whatwg] Dialogue and inline quotations
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
Tue Oct 31 05:34:33 PST 2006
I think if HTML5 deprecate the use of <dl> for dialog, that it ought
to provide a an alternative syntax for them. I know it has already
been discussed, but I'd suggest this:
<dialog>
<p><cite>Me:</cite> <q>Can I say something?</q>
<p><cite>Him:</cite> <q>No!</q>
</dialog>
In this design, <dialog> is optional, only needed when the dialog
needs to be separated from the main text, <q> is optional when inside
<dialog>, and <cite> can be omitted if the interlocutor name is not
specified. This leaves much flexibility when writing dialogs, and
thus allows the markup to be used for dialogs at places <dl> could not.
For instance, this is a dialog, but since its mixed with the main
text you can't surround it by <dialog>. Also, using <cite> in here
isn't very practical, as the text refers to the speakers as "he" or
"she" most of the time.
<p>He was downstair when he heard a strange noise from outside.
When he
went to see, he saw Julietta in the park screaming at him:
<q>Where were
you?</q></p>
<p><q>I was busy fixing the pipes. What happened here?</q> he
asked.</p>
<p><q>There was a cat on the tree</q>, she said. <q>It jumped
and landed
in here.</q> She was pointing at a crate full of pieces of
metal. <q>I
jumped!</q></p>
It's interesting to note however that the same text could be
surrounded by dialog tags when formatting the same dialog in French.
In the following example, <q> must be styled with no marks and add em
dashes must be added at the start of each paragraph in the dialog
(this could be done by CSS, although here I've done it in the source
for clarity):
<p>Il était au sous-sol quand il entendit un bruit étrange
venant de dehors.
Quand il est alla voir ce qui se passait, il vit Julietta dans
le park qui
lui cria:</p>
<dialog>
<p>— <q>Où étais-tu ?</q></p>
<p>— <q>J'était occupé à réparer les tuyaux. Qu'est-ce qui c'est
passé
ici ?</q> a-t-il demandé.</p>
<p>— <q>Il y avait un chat dans l'arbre</q>, dit-elle. <q>Il a
sauté
pour atterrir juste là.</q>
</dialog>
<p>Elle pointant une caisse pleine de morceaux de métal.</p>
<dialog>
<p>— <q>Et j'ai fait le saut !</q></p>
</dialog>
Note that without <q> in the previous example, there is no easy way
to distinguish inserted text like "dit-elle" ("she said"), these are
typically disambiguated from context in French. But I'd consider the
<q> element optional anyway, even if omitting it leaves this
ambiguity. The reason being that there is no way to disambiguate
inserted text inside inline quotations either. What I did in the
previous dialog requires the removal of the quote characters in the
styling of <q>, but to be consistent you'd need to do that with
inline quotations too, which goes against both the recommended usage
and the default stylesheet for <q>:
« <q>Pourquoi se déplacer ?</q> dit-elle. <q>On a pas besoin de
vous</q> »
Personally, I think this is how <q> should have worked from the
start, but it may be too late to change that. Anyway, let's return to
the subject of dialogs.
The second type of dialog I considered is more like in a theatrical
piece, where dialogs are completely free of any other prose. It was
previously suggested in HTML4 to use <dl> for this:
<p>Mary and Mark begin walking in the park.</p>
<dl>
<dt>Mary</dt>
<dd>So where do you want to go tomorrow? I can tell you already
have something in mind.</dd>
<dt>Mark</dt>
<dd>What makes you think that?</dd>
</dl>
I think it'd be better expressed this way:
<p>Mary and Mark begin walking in the park.</p>
<dialog>
<p><cite>Mary:</cite> So where do you want to go tomorrow? I can
tell
you already have something in mind.</p>
<p><cite>Mark:</cite> What makes you think that?</p>
</dialog>
Here, <q> tags would be optional because the dialog element already
implies that everything in the paragraphs is part of the dialog. And
since <q> adds quotes, which are not desired in this case, it'd
probably be a bad idea to add it anyway.
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://www.michelf.com/
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