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I've got two little problems....I hope you can help:

(1) I'm getting a couple of items flagged as "invalid SGML" and I
don't know what to do with them.

.... trailing periods

-- well, it doesn't quite look like that (but it wouldn't cut &
paste properly); it looks like 2 or 3 hyphens butted up together
(e.g., December 6--The Feast of St. Stephen)


(2) I'm confused re whether I should be coding ABBR or ACRONYM for the
following:

DOT - Department of Transportation

FLQ - Front de Liberation du Quebec

a.s.a.p. - as soon as possible

I don't know....I guess in conversation, I've been using abbreviation
and acronym interchangeably. I suspect they are two distinct things
in HTML/CSS ???

Thanks for your help !

Fred

Fred <> wrote:

>(1) I'm getting a couple of items flagged as "invalid SGML" and I
>don't know what to do with them.

URL?
We need to see what's actually in the HTML code to see what the
problem is.

>... trailing periods

An ellipsis.
Easiest way is to cheat and just to use three full stop characters.
&hellip; and … are both correct.

>-- well, it doesn't quite look like that (but it wouldn't cut &
>paste properly); it looks like 2 or 3 hyphens butted up together
>(e.g., December 6--The Feast of St. Stephen)

&mdash; or — might be what you mean.

>(2) I'm confused re whether I should be coding ABBR or ACRONYM for the
>following:
>
>I don't know....I guess in conversation, I've been using abbreviation
>and acronym interchangeably. I suspect they are two distinct things
>in HTML/CSS ???

An abbreviation is an abbreviation. An acronym is a sub-set of
abbreviation, one that is pronounced as a word. The HTML spec is
confused because the authors couldn't agree on what an acronym
actually is.

>DOT - Department of Transportation

Do you prounouce it 'dot' or 'dee oh tee'? If it's 'dot' then it's an
acronym, otherwise it's an abbreviation.

>FLQ - Front de Liberation du Quebec

I'm guessing that this is spelt out letter by letter? So it's an
abbreviation.

>a.s.a.p. - as soon as possible

This can be either. Some people say it as a word and some people spell
it out. In this case the full stops between the letters imply that
it's spelt out letter by letter and hence is an abbreviation.

Steve

--
"My theories appal you, my heresies outrage you,
I never answer letters and you don't like my tie." - The Doctor

Steve Pugh <> <http://steve.pugh.net/>

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:54:32 +0100, Steve Pugh wrote:

> An abbreviation is an abbreviation. An acronym is a sub-set of
> abbreviation, one that is pronounced as a word. The HTML spec is
> confused because the authors couldn't agree on what an acronym
> actually is.

And because of the confusion, <acronym/> is being removed from XHTML2, so
best to alwasy use <abbr/> for forwards compatibility.

--
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