[whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text

[Ian Hickson]

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
> 
> I have a copy of the Constitution of the United States on my web site. 
> That is a legal text. It also qualifies as "legalese," a derogatory 
> term. If I were to change it to HTML 5, the current spec encourages me 
> to place the entire Constitution in small elements.

The spec says the following:

# The small element represents small print or other side comments.
#
# Note: Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, 
# legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used 
# for attribution.

I don't see how this can be said to encourage putting the constitution in 
<small> elements. The constitution is hardly "small print" or a side 
comment.


> Encouraging use of small print for legalese also encourages this:
> 
> <h1>
> <a href="continue.html">
> Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue.
> </a>
> </h1>
> <small>By clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your
> credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked.</small>

Right, that's the case we do want to encourage. It's better than the 
alternative, which would be:

 <style>
  .s { font-size: smaller; }
 </style>
 <h1>
 <a href="continue.html">
 Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue.
 </a>
 </h1>
 <span class=s>By clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your
 credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked.</span>

...because if they use <small>, you can configure your client to go out of 
its way to highlight <small> text, whereas you have no way to know to 
highlight any text based on its font size or class.


> Now that might not stand if challenged in a court, but it is definitely 
> not the kind of thing that the HTML 5 spec should condone. And yet, in 
> its current form, it does. What ought to constitute outright fraud is 
> encouraged by the HTML 5 spec in its current form.

HTML5 doesn't encourage deceptive practices or fraud.


> The HTML 5 spec also encourages, in its current form, placing any legal 
> disclaimer in a small element. Therefore, we could have this result.
>
> <h1>BigCo Services: We guarantee our work</h1>
> <small>Except between the hours of 12:01 am and 11:59 pm.</small>
> 
> That is a deceptive use of a disclaimer that the HTML 5 spec encourages. 
> This is most unfortunate.

It is significantly better than the alternative, which is people hiding 
the disclaimer with <span> and styles (rather than <small> and styles).


> There is no middle ground here. Encouraging legal text to be in a small 
> element except "when it is deceptive or inappropriate" would at best 
> lead to confusion.

It seems worse to encourage it to be in a <p> element where it is 
indistinguishable from other small text and cannot be programmatically 
highlighted.


On Fri, 5 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
>
> My intention was to encourage the HTML 5 specification to not contain 
> any content that could be construed as legal advice.

I really don't think the text in the spec can even remotely be construed 
as legal advice.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
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