This would only work in new browsers and is wordy:
<reference class="abbreviation" ttle="some
description">someword</reference>.
It doesn't add any extra information. It's harder to use.
Conceptually, it may be more elegant, but conceptual elegance is not
an impetus for large scale adoptions. In my opinion, it is not a
worthwhile change to pursue, when there are so many actively broken
issues that can be fixed.
True, it doesn't provide any extra information, and perhaps it is harder to
use, but that is not the point. The point is that this tag can be used to
mark up any possible reference-type word (notes, sidenotes, footnotes,
translations, meanings, definitiones, you name all of them and then some).
So with just one tag, I catch all possible semantics within a classified
wordgroup.
That (or something similar) is what creates room for natural growth and
evolution of contextual semantics on a medium (Internet) that is still
developing and very dynamic.
Bert
