On Nov 2, 2006, at 3:44 PM, Jonathan Worent wrote:
--- Christoph Päper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
First off I think the requirement for a |title| is too strict,
because there are time and space saving abbreviations everyone knows
-- i.e. either their expansion or their meaning -- that do not need
an expansion, e.g. "e.g." or "AIDS". Therefore the second sentence
should use 'may', not 'should'.
Agreed. (At the least, the specification is currently ambiguous about
whether title= is required.)
I disagree. There is never a guarantee that people will know what an
abbreviation stands for, I know what AIDS is but not what it stands
for.
But that applies not just to abbreviations, but to writing in general.
All writing assumes a level of knowledge. If a blind biologist
listening to a scientific journal heard "DNA" expanded as
"deoxyribonucleic acid" on every page, that would quickly become
infuriating, even if the UA was smart enough to do it for only the
first occurrence on each page. (Temporarily turning off such expansions
would be unreasonable if there were other, unfamiliar, abbreviations
present; and trying to request expansions from the UA case-by-case
would be tiresome.)
...
<abbr title="that is">i. e.</abbr>
This would not be correct usage because the abbreviation i.e. does not
represent "that is" it means that though. In this case you using is to
mark up the definition.
I use <abbr title="that is">i.e.</abbr> not just because that's what it
means, but because that's how it *should* be expanded if it needs to be
expanded, for example if it is being read aloud. (Expanding it as "id
est" would be pretentiously unreasonable.)
Similarly in "Mac <abbr>OS</abbr> <abbr title="10">X</abbr>", I don't
give "<abbr>OS</abbr>" a title=, because what "OS" stands for is never
relevant in the context.
--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
