Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
On Sun, 19 Jul 2009, Eduard Pascual wrote: On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Ian Hickson i...@hixie.ch wrote: [...] On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Eduard Pascual wrote: It's clear that, despite the spec would currently encourage this example's markup, it is not a good choice. IMHO, either of these should be used instead: pYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed. (Guarantee applies only to commercial buildings.)/p or smallYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed. (Guarantee applies only to commercial buildings.)/small In practice, if the author wants to make the parenthetical text smaller, he will. The question is whether we should encourage such small text to be marked up in a way distinguishable from other stylistic spans. Indeed, making legal text clearly readable should be a goal. However, I don't think it is too much a HTML5 goal: afaik, in most countries there are general laws that define which kind of text can hold legal value on different kinds of media, dealing with details such as minimum size and color contrasts for each media, maximum speed for running text (like bottom-screen text on TV ads), and so on. Of course, these will vary from country to country and/or region to region; but IMHO general law is the area where legal text should be handled with. Authors hence should find advice about the actual requirements for legal text to be legally binding (ie: asking their lawyers for advice), and honor such restrictions when putting a webpage together. It is pointless to make specific encouragements or discouragements on how to include legal text on an HTML5 document: a good advice may backfire if it leads a good-intended author to do something that doesn't match local laws on that regard; and evil-intended users will ignore any advice from the spec and just push as much as they can to the edge, looking for the most hard-to-read-but-still-legal possible form. The basic task of HTML (the language itself, not the spec defining it) is to provide authors with tools to build their documents and pages in an interoperable way. HTML5 does well that job in the area of small print, providing the small element to mark it up. That's exactly enough, and IMHO there is no point on trying to go further. The spec now has no encouragements at all. This is all it says: # The small element represents small print or other side comments. It then has two non-normative comments: # Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, legal # restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for # attribution. # # The small element does not de-emphasize or lower the importance of # text emphasized by the em element or marked as important with the strong # element. This is about as neutral as I can make it while still keeping it useful. I'm not sure if the word legalese was intended to refer to all kinds of legal text, or just the suspicios or useless ones. In any case, a more accurate wording would help. This wording is vague intentionally, because it is a vague observation. I don't know how we could make it more accurate. If vagueness is intentional, just take thing explicitly vague, rather than a term that some may just take as vague but others may take as catch-all and others seem to even find offensive/despective. I really don't understand this objection. First, leave the formal description The small element represents small print or other side comments. as is: IMHO it is accurate and simple, and that's quite enough to ask from a spec. Next, replace the note that reads Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for attribution. with something like this: Small print is often used for *some* forms of legal text and for attribution. [...] This makes clear that HTML (technically) allows using small to put legal text (or anything else) in small print, but it doesn't encourage any specific usage of small print. I'm not convinced the suggested text is any better than the current text, to be honest. [...] [...] The key on the sentence Small print is often used for *some* forms of legal text and for attribution. is the emphasis on some: this should be enough for any reader to understand that, if only some forms go on small print, other forms just don't. The some achieves your intended vagueness, and the emphasis makes such vagueness explicit enough. The current wording small print is typically used for legalesse is not just vague, but as ambiguous as the term legalesse itself: a significant proportion of authors might miss-understand it and assume that any form of legal text is legalesse, so it can be on small print, but it isn't require to be so (because of the typically). Addressing this potential
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Markus Ernst wrote:
Ian Hickson schrieb:
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
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
smallBy 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=sBy 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.
Anyway that does not prevent the BigCos from using span or p or div, if
they really want to style their fraudulent text the way it is hard to read.
Indeed, nothing will. But as far as possible, we want to encourage such
test to be marked up in way that can be detected in this way.
The more user agents will be set to display the small element big, the
less this element will be used by those who are actually addressed by
this encouragement.
Sure, I wouldn't expect this to be a common feature.
Instead of keeping a purely presentational category such as small as
an HTML element, would it not be more efficient to use some kind of
legal element?
What would the benefit be?
User agents then could be configured to ignore small text sizes or badly
visible colors on legal elements.
Surely this would hve the same problems as small that you describe
above?
Also, other ways to bar people from reading legal text, such as setting
it in uppercase characters, could be handled - which does not seem
appropriate for a small element.
I'm not sure I follow.
And countries willing to protect their people from fraud could establish
a law that any text on a website is only legally binding when it is
marked up with the legal element.
That's an excellent reason to not use an element specifically for legal
text -- I really don't want laws to be written about HTML. That way lies
madness, and significant reductions in the possible ways we can evolve the
language.
On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
The text from the current spec is, Small print is typically legalese
describing disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights.
Small print is also sometimes used for attribution.
By suggesting it is typical, that implicitly encourages people to use
small print for legal text.
I think the horse left that barn decades ago.
One of HTML 5's design principles is to take the predominant
practice of what people are doing on the web, and turn that
into the standard that all HTML 5 authors should follow.
To some extent, yes.
Certain sections in the spec are normative or non-normative. It does not
make sense for the HTML 5 spec to make a non- normative comment in a
normative section. Furthermore, it is fallacious to argue that something
is not encouragement but is normative.
The sentence in question is explicitly marked as a non-normative note, so
I don't think it's misleading in the way you describe. It's following the
conventions used throughout the document.
Leaving any suggestion in the HTML 5 spec that legal text typically is,
could be, or should be in small print could do a disservice to anyone
reading the spec.
Take a hypothetical example. Joe is the owner-operator of SmallCo, a
building contractor. Joe decides to create a web site for his business.
Being technically proficient, he consults the HTML 5 web site. He reads
how the small element is typically used for disclaimers, etc. On his
one- page web site, he posts the following notice:
pYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed.
smallGuarantee applies only to commercial buildings./small/p
Joe gets a new customer from the web site. The customer has him build a
residential house. Joe does the job. The work is done well, but the
customer is not 100% satisfied. The customer wants various changes that
Joe does not consider necessary. Joe and the customer have a serious
dispute. The customer claims that $45,000 worth of work must be
performed for the customer to be 100% satisfied. Joe claims that his
obligations are already fulfiled, and the 100% satisfaction guarantee
does not apply to the customer's job because his residential house is
not a commercial building. They take their dispute to court.
In this particular case, the disclaimer Joe posted on his web site
becomes a hotly disputed issue. The judge takes special note that Joe
had his
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
On Sun, Jul 19, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Ian Hickson i...@hixie.ch wrote: [...] On Fri, 3 Jul 2009, Eduard Pascual wrote: It's clear that, despite the spec would currently encourage this example's markup, it is not a good choice. IMHO, either of these should be used instead: pYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed. (Guarantee applies only to commercial buildings.)/p or smallYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed. (Guarantee applies only to commercial buildings.)/small In practice, if the author wants to make the parenthetical text smaller, he will. The question is whether we should encourage such small text to be marked up in a way distinguishable from other stylistic spans. Indeed, making legal text clearly readable should be a goal. However, I don't think it is too much a HTML5 goal: afaik, in most countries there are general laws that define which kind of text can hold legal value on different kinds of media, dealing with details such as minimum size and color contrasts for each media, maximum speed for running text (like bottom-screen text on TV ads), and so on. Of course, these will vary from country to country and/or region to region; but IMHO general law is the area where legal text should be handled with. Authors hence should find advice about the actual requirements for legal text to be legally binding (ie: asking their lawyers for advice), and honor such restrictions when putting a webpage together. It is pointless to make specific encouragements or discouragements on how to include legal text on an HTML5 document: a good advice may backfire if it leads a good-intended author to do something that doesn't match local laws on that regard; and evil-intended users will ignore any advice from the spec and just push as much as they can to the edge, looking for the most hard-to-read-but-still-legal possible form. The basic task of HTML (the language itself, not the spec defining it) is to provide authors with tools to build their documents and pages in an interoperable way. HTML5 does well that job in the area of small print, providing the small element to mark it up. That's exactly enough, and IMHO there is no point on trying to go further. I'm not sure if the word legalese was intended to refer to all kinds of legal text, or just the suspicios or useless ones. In any case, a more accurate wording would help. This wording is vague intentionally, because it is a vague observation. I don't know how we could make it more accurate. If vagueness is intentional, just take thing explicitly vague, rather than a term that some may just take as vague but others may take as catch-all and others seem to even find offensive/despective. First, leave the formal description The small element represents small print or other side comments. as is: IMHO it is accurate and simple, and that's quite enough to ask from a spec. Next, replace the note that reads Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for attribution. with something like this: Small print is often used for *some* forms of legal text and for attribution. Defining which kinds of legal text should be on small print, however, is out of the scope of HTML. This makes clear that HTML (technically) allows using small to put legal text (or anything else) in small print, but it doesn't encourage any specific usage of small print. I'm not convinced the suggested text is any better than the current text, to be honest. I'm also reluctant to start explicitly saying what is out of scope, because there's no end to that list. I don't fully agree on that argument, but let's leave the scope part out (it was quite redundant, anyway, just to be on the safe side). The key on the sentence Small print is often used for *some* forms of legal text and for attribution. is the emphasis on some: this should be enough for any reader to understand that, if only some forms go on small print, other forms just don't. The some achieves your intended vagueness, and the emphasis makes such vagueness explicit enough. The current wording small print is typically used for legalesse is not just vague, but as ambiguous as the term legalesse itself: a significant proportion of authors might miss-understand it and assume that any form of legal text is legalesse, so it can be on small print, but it isn't require to be so (because of the typically). Addressing this potential missunderstanding is the exact intent of my proposed text. Regards, Eduard Pascual
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
Ian Hickson schrieb:
On Thu, 4 Jun 2009, Andrew W. Hagen wrote:
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
smallBy 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=sBy 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.
Anyway that does not prevent the BigCos from using span or p or
div, if they really want to style their fraudulent text the way it is
hard to read. The more user agents will be set to display the small
element big, the less this element will be used by those who are
actually addressed by this encouragement.
Instead of keeping a purely presentational category such as small as
an HTML element, would it not be more efficient to use some kind of
legal element? User agents then could be configured to ignore small
text sizes or badly visible colors on legal elements. Also, other ways
to bar people from reading legal text, such as setting it in uppercase
characters, could be handled - which does not seem appropriate for a
small element.
And countries willing to protect their people from fraud could establish
a law that any text on a website is only legally binding when it is
marked up with the legal element.
--
Markus
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
The text from the current spec is, Small print is typically legalese describing disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights. Small print is also sometimes used for attribution. By suggesting it is typical, that implicitly encourages people to use small print for legal text. One of HTML 5's design principles is to take the predominant practice of what people are doing on the web, and turn that into the standard that all HTML 5 authors should follow. Certain sections in the spec are normative or non-normative. It does not make sense for the HTML 5 spec to make a non- normative comment in a normative section. Furthermore, it is fallacious to argue that something is not encouragement but is normative. Leaving any suggestion in the HTML 5 spec that legal text typically is, could be, or should be in small print could do a disservice to anyone reading the spec. Take a hypothetical example. Joe is the owner-operator of SmallCo, a building contractor. Joe decides to create a web site for his business. Being technically proficient, he consults the HTML 5 web site. He reads how the small element is typically used for disclaimers, etc. On his one- page web site, he posts the following notice: pYour 100% satisfaction in the work of SmallCo is guaranteed. smallGuarantee applies only to commercial buildings. /small/p Joe gets a new customer from the web site. The customer has him build a residential house. Joe does the job. The work is done well, but the customer is not 100% satisfied. The customer wants various changes that Joe does not consider necessary. Joe and the customer have a serious dispute. The customer claims that $45,000 worth of work must be performed for the customer to be 100% satisfied. Joe claims that his obligations are already fulfiled, and the 100% satisfaction guarantee does not apply to the customer's job because his residential house is not a commercial building. They take their dispute to court. In this particular case, the disclaimer Joe posted on his web site becomes a hotly disputed issue. The judge takes special note that Joe had his disclaimer in small print. Due to the law of the particular jurisdiction they are in, Joe loses. Joe now must perform a great deal of work for no pay, or pay the customer $45,000 to hire another contractor. The financial fortunes of SmallCo and of Joe have taken a terrible turn for the worse. Joe feels like the HTML 5 spec gave him bad advice. Whether legal text may properly appear in small print has been the subject of numerous lawsuits of greatly significant value, at least in American law. The implicit encouragement to use small print takes the lexicographical mandate of seeing what people are doing on the web and then making that the standard too far. It should be impossible for anyone reading a tech specification to think that they are getting legal advice. Yet that is not the case in the current HTML 5 spec. The current situation in the spec is really bad. As it reads currently, the spec encourages fraud. This should not be acceptable considering how much of a benefit HTML 5 will be otherwise. Additionally, the word legalese has a strongly negative connotation . Using the term legalese as a stand-in for any legal text implies that all legal text is suspicious or useless at best. The spec should not sit in judgment on the law. Espousing a vaguely anarchical political point of view is OK, but that should not be part of HTML 5. What should be done is to remove all references to the law, legalese, and such from the small element section. If people want to put something legal in a small element, let them make their own choice. Let them come up with that generally bad idea on their own, or perhaps in consultation with their own attorneys who can take responsibility for their error if the use of the small element causes some problem. What the law actually says will vary according to your jurisdiction. The problem with a legal element would be that it does not correspond to any discrete set of text. If a web page becomes the subject of a court case, the court is likely to look at any part of the web page it thinks is relevant, not just the part contained in a legal element. Thus, the rationale for a legal element would not carry through to the real world. For example, the following would not result in an effective legal defense: legalSmallCo guarantees 100% satisfaction/legal smallexcept for residential buildings/small Furthermore, we should not create a legal element in anticipation that in the future at some undetermined point it is conceivable that some legislature will somehow connect the legal status of text on a web page to its appearance in a legal element. It's too speculative. That would prove unworkable anyway. To sum up, legal text generally should not be in small print, because legal text is important and should be easy to read. The exact legal consequences of legal text in small print will vary depending on the facts of
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
I have addressed all Andrew's points previously. Please forgive my posting an outline of the arguments here. 1. The specification does not encourage using the SMALL element for legal notices. It merely allows the SMALL element to contain legal notices. 2. Legal texts are unreadable on their own; putting them in small text does not make them any less readable. This statement does not make me an anarchist; I can say the same about math :-) 3. Legal texts are best read copied to Notepad because they do not and cannot contain any normative markup. (They are also best displayed in an inline frame, especially because the editor of the page is usually not allowed to edit them.) 4. I concur that warranties should be added to disclaimers in the text to make it less negatively biased. IMHO, Chris
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
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
smallBy 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=sBy 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.
h1BigCo Services: We guarantee our work/h1
smallExcept 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/, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text (was: Pre-Last Call Comments)
2009/6/5 Jeff Walden jwalden+wha...@mit.edu: Do you seriously believe any client in an industry where he has to step carefully enough to worry about typographical formatting of legal notices is fool enough to follow a not-even-recommendation in the HTML5 specification over what his lawyer tells him is the correct thing to do? In that case, we may write: The small element represent small print, that is content that, while being as important as content is surrounding it (or even more important), the author tries to hide from the user or otherwise make less likely to be noticed without reading carefully. Note: common uses for this element are legalese, attributions, copyrights, disclaimers and the like. Jeff Giovanni
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text
On 6/4/2009 5:10 PM, Jeff Walden wrote: Do you seriously believe any client in an industry where he has to step carefully enough to worry about typographical formatting of legal notices is fool enough to follow a not-even-recommendation in the HTML5 specification over what his lawyer tells him is the correct thing to do? Jeff My intention was to encourage the HTML 5 specification to not contain any content that could be construed as legal advice. That is not a comment about the professionalism of any web designer, or of the industry. It is just a very bad idea for a technical document to issue anything that could be construed as legal advice, and poor advice at that. If anyone took my words as any criticism of anyone, please understand that they were not meant that way. Responding to Kristof Zelechovski: What is encouragement or legalese is of course subjective. The examples in my previous message were meant to illustrate what the HTML 5 spec seems to invite. By listing those examples I meant to encourage that the HTML 5 spec be changed to remove any mention of legal texts, legalese, warranties, disclaimers, and so on. I stand by all the points that I have made here on this topic. Andrew Hagen contact2...@awhlink.com
[whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text (was: Pre-Last Call Comments)
Responding to Kristof Zelechovski. 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 same logic would apply for any legal document, including receipts for e-commerce purchases. I find that unfortunate because it makes the HTML 5 spec look foolish and irrelevant. 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 smallBy clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked./small 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. The HTML 5 spec also encourages, in its current form, placing any legal disclaimer in a small element. Therefore, we could have this result. h1BigCo Services: We guarantee our work/h1 smallExcept 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. 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. I'm not saying that everyone who puts legal text in small print is doing something bad, but generally speaking, that is a practice to avoid if possible. By making the changes I suggested, people can still use the small element for legal text. They can also choose other markup. It's just that the HTML 5 spec will do the right thing, and not go out of its way to make legal text small and hard to read. Andrew Hagen contact2...@awhlink.com
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text (was: Pre-Last Call Comments)
While I actually defended the recommendation to use the SMALL element for legal text, and I am still ready to do it, it is worth noting that the text of section 4.6.6. does not contain such a recommendation. It merely states that out of possible uses of the SMALL element, the legal use is the most common. The term legalese does not apply to pages that have the text of law as the main content, as in your example with the constitution. It only applies to cases where the legal text describes either the current page or the thing described by the current page and it is considered secondary to the main content. The example h1 a href=continue.html Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue. /a /h1 smallBy clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked./small is incorrect, it should read: p a href=continue.html Welcome to the BigCo web site. Click to continue. /a STRONG Terms and conditions apply (see below)./STRONG /p smallBy clicking above, you agree that BigCo can charge your credit card $10 per visit to the BigCo web site per page clicked./small (Legal text itself can be small but its existence must be advertised so that the customer knows what to send to her lawyer.) Regarding the example h1BigCo Services: We guarantee our work/h1 smallExcept between the hours of 12:01 am and 11:59 pm./small It is also incorrect: a warranty is as much of legalese as a disclaimer. Would it make everybody happier if the relevant text quoted warranties alongside disclaimers? IMHO, Chris
Re: [whatwg] do not encourage use of small element for legal text (was: Pre-Last Call Comments)
Do you seriously believe any client in an industry where he has to step carefully enough to worry about typographical formatting of legal notices is fool enough to follow a not-even-recommendation in the HTML5 specification over what his lawyer tells him is the correct thing to do? Jeff
