Responding, generally, to this discussion of de-emphasis:
In looking for a print analog the only common cases I can think of
for de-emphasized text are notes (footnotes, endnotes, etc.) and
parenthetical text. HTML 5 already has elements for asides & notes.
As for parentheses, if the typical web author wants to insert
parenthetical text and is writing in a language that uses
parentheses, he/she will use parentheses. They're obvious, they're
available from the keyboard. If one marked a piece of text as
parenthetical using an HTML element, one would quite likely want it
to be styled inside parentheses, and we all know how inconsistent CSS-
generated content is. Few authors use the <q> tag, for the same reasons.
And I once had an English teacher tell me that if it had to be stuck
in parentheses, it probably wasn't worth saying at all -- which seems
to me to apply to some of the use cases mentioned in this discussion.
I don't know that parentheses have been mentioned in the discussion
to this point. The visual styles that have been proposed for de-
emphasized text are reduced font size and reduced opacity (sorry if
I've missed something). A few people have pointed out that these will
actually make text *more* visually obvious, so I made a test page to
see:
http://alpha.learnnc.org/~dwalbert/misc/demtest.htm
There are three pieces of de-emphasized text here: one with font-
size: 80%, one with opacity: 0.8, and one with opacity: 0.6. I know
where the de-emphasized text is, so it's easy for me to find, but the
small-print and 60% opacity examples tend to draw my eye -- the
styling gives visual emphasis, in other words. The 80% opacity
example is so subtle that I might miss it or assume it was some kind
of browser/monitor error. (Were I not using my fancy Cinema Display I
probably would overlook it.)
Obviously this isn't a test of all the possibilities for visual
styling, but it seems to me that any visual style that clearly marks
a piece of text is going to make it stand out and, therefore, give it
visual emphasis. I would assume, as a reader, that the small text was
meant to be de-emphasized -- logically de-emphasized -- because I'd
understand the convention the author used, but the mere act of
noticing that and having to process it visually and logically will
cause me to pay *more* attention to it than to the surrounding text.
The 60% opacity text similarly draws my eye, but I would never assume
that the author thought it less important than the surrounding text;
I'd assume it was a visited link or else some kind of badly designed
highlight.
I'd propose, then, that inline visual de-emphasis may be impossible.
(I'd suspect the same for audio de-emphasis -- would the smart screen
reader whisper it? Wouldn't that, too, draw attention?) I could
certainly be wrong, but I'd like to see a live example. If it isn't
possible to functionally de-emphasize inline text, then having an
element for it is a purely philosophical exercise and wouldn't have
practical value.
_____
David Walbert
LEARN NC, UNC-Chapel Hill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
