[whatwg] Elements to markup article headings

[Andrés Sanhueza]

There are some analog conventions that does make sense to standardize
in different markup languages. This is not necessarily the job of the
HTML5 team, but it may have those issues in mind. There are a few
regarding the heading of newspaper articles, specific names differs,
but meaning is the same:

—The kicker / running head: a phrase that goes right before the
heading, usually a short teaser or the name of a section.
—The headline: the article title.
—The drop deck / lead /lede: the paragraph that gives a short abstract
of the article.
—The byline: the line that contains meta info like the author, and/or
the date of the article. This can go before the lead, after it or at
the end of the article.

There have been some discussion regarding each one which have been
more or less clarified. The way to markup that with the current
standard:

<article>
<header>
<hgroup>
<h2>Kicker</h2>
<h1>Headline</h1>
</hgroup>
<p><b>Deck</b></p>
</header>
<footer>Byline</footer>
[...]
</article>

It looks fine, but I'm not entirely convinced by the tag for the
byline, mainly because, even when it could be place differently or
even multiple times inside a newspaper article, when it appears at the
beginning it could make more sense to have it between the <header>,
but that is not possible due to the rule of not having <header> tags
with <footer> descendants and vice-versa. That does makes sense when
sticking to what the names of the elements imply, yet conceptually I
see no reason a <footer> as in "textual metadata of a section" can't
be inside a <header> ("lead of a section"). Alternatives could be
using the <small> element, yet that's an inline element and I'm not
sure it complies with the byline meaning as well as the <footer>
element. I could rather propose a change to the <footer> behavior or
even a new element, but not sure if that is worth it.

Any suggestion or comments regarding the way to markup newspaper
article headings?