A few years ago, Dan Cederholm published a series of articles called Simplequiz in which he posed some options for marking up a specified piece of content and invited readers to choose the one they felt was the best way to mark that up. The value was in the comments in which people said why they made that choice and debated the options (which means it is THE LAW that you read the preceeding comments before adding your own).
With Dan’s blessing, we’re running an occasional series of HTML5 Simplequizzes. And here’s the second, suggested by a reader named Alohci.
It’s easy to cite works in HTML and default browser stylesheets obey the typographic convention of showing the citation in italics:
<p><q>There was a young man from Nantucket</q>
wrote John Keats in his <cite>Ode on a Grecian Urn</cite>.</p>(Although if you also link to an online copy of the work, do you put the link inside the cite element, or the cite element inside the <a>? Oops, that’s another discussion.)
But how do you mark up the author of the work cited — in this case, the text “John Keats”?
Choose from the answers below please. Make sure you show your working out.
A:
<b>John Keats</b>B:
<i>John Keats</i>C:
<cite>John Keats</cite>D:
<span style="font-style:italic">John Keats</span> E:
none of the above, and I shall leave a comment to tell you why each of the above is entirely preposterous
Your answers below, please, with your rationale. I’ll wade in on Thursday 14th October.
Note: please DON’T USE ANGLE BRACKETS in your comments. Escape them with < and > or just use [foo] – we’ll know what you mean.
HTML5 Simplequiz #2: citing people originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on October 8, 2010.
