<abbr> = <acronym>?

[Steven]

Is <abbr> = <acronym>?

 

[SeeSchloss]

Is <abbr> = <acronym>?

Hmm... I'd say <abbr> is for abbreviations and <acronym> is
for acronyms, but I may be wrong...

 

[kayodeok]

Is <abbr> = <acronym>?

If you can pronounce it, it is <acronym>, otherwise, it is <abbr>.

Use <abbr title="United States of America"> for USA and <acronym
title="Radio Detection And Ranging"> for Radar.

In any case, IE6 doesn't appear to support either <abbr> or <acronym>

Though I still use it and ignore IE6's inability to render it.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

Steven wrote in

If you can pronounce it, it is <acronym>, otherwise, it is <abbr>.
Use <abbr title="United States of America"> for USA and <acronym
title="Radio Detection And Ranging"> for Radar.

What could be the advantage for a visitor?? Everybody knows what is meant by
USA as well as radar.
I even think 'radar' is more meaningful for an average person than 'Radio
Detection And Ranging'.
Nico

 

[SeeSchloss]

Après mure réflexion, "Nico Schuyt" a écrit :

What could be the advantage for a visitor?? Everybody knows what
is meant by USA as well as radar.
I even think 'radar' is more meaningful for an average person
than 'Radio Detection And Ranging'.

But not everybody knows what JPEG, CSS, HTML, XML, GIF,
YASA, YAFRAY, POVRay, LAME or GPU mean ?
Look at the W3C homepage : the W3C defines all their
acronyms and abbreviations in the menu.

BTW, maybe it is slightly different for english, but french
defines an "acronyme" as the first letters of an expression
(like EDF for Electricité de France) and an "abréviation"
as "a shortened form of a word or phrase". For example,
XHTML is not an acronym but azn abbreviation because it
stands for "eXtended HyperText Markup Language", the
acronym would be "EHML". It may be different in english
though.

 

[David Dorward]

What could be the advantage for a visitor?? Everybody knows what is meant
by USA as well as radar.

There are less commonly known acronyms and abbreviations.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

But not everybody knows what JPEG, CSS, HTML, XML, GIF,
... mean.

Maybe, but in all the examples above someone who doesn't know waht the
abbreviation means certainly has no idea what the full expression means.
Isn't it better to make a link on such words to a page with complete
explanation (when needed)?.
Nico

 

[Steven]

Hmm... I'd say <abbr> is for abbreviations and <acronym> is
for acronyms, but I may be wrong...

Er,... yes, of course.
I guess I was focusing too much on the syntax and what it does.
Thanx all.

 

[SeeSchloss]

Après mure réflexion, "Nico Schuyt" a écrit :

Maybe, but in all the examples above someone who doesn't know
waht the abbreviation means certainly has no idea what the full
expression means. Isn't it better to make a link on such words to
a page with complete explanation (when needed)?.
Nico

Well I think you could use it in a page describing it, like
<acronym title="Graphics Interchange Format">GIF</acronym>
is a compressed graphical format...

Of course, something like "GIF (Graphics Interchange
Format) is..." would be at least as efficient but... ;-)

And there are probably (non-technical) acronyms that do not
need an explanation to be understood (like usenet ones ?).

 

[Nico Schuyt]

Nico Schuyt a écrit :

Well I think you could use it in a page describing it, like
<acronym title="Graphics Interchange Format">GIF</acronym>
is a compressed graphical format...

Of course, something like "GIF (Graphics Interchange
Format) is..." would be at least as efficient but... ;-)

Isn't it better to use: <acronym title="a compressed graphical
format">GIF</acronym>?
Nico

 

[Toby A Inkster]

If you can pronounce it, it is <acronym>, otherwise, it is <abbr>.

That is one school of thought. The other is that abbreviations formed by
taking the first part of each word and sticking them together are
acronyms. So the following are acronyms:

USA
UK
Laser
UNICEF

and the following are not:

Dr
abbr.
iff

Of course, most people (from either school of thought) agree that all
acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms.

It is primarily because of this confusion that <acronym/> is being ditched
in XHTML 2. So instead use <abbr/> always.

As an aside, it is believed that the <acronym/> element was slipped into
the HTML 4.0 specification as an April Fools' Day joke. If you check the
HTML 4.0 (not 4.01) spec, you'll see it was published on 1 April 1997.

Lastly, why is 'abbreviation' such a very long word?

 

[Mark Parnell]

Sometime around Wed, 10 Dec 2003 21:29:00 +0000, Toby A Inkster is reported
to have stated:

Lastly, why is 'abbreviation' such a very long word?

Just use abbr. ;-)

 

[Richard]

[email protected]:

If you can pronounce it, it is <acronym>, otherwise, it is <abbr>.

Use <abbr title="United States of America"> for USA and <acronym
title="Radio Detection And Ranging"> for Radar.

Output would actually be RDAR. Not RaDAR.

In any case, IE6 doesn't appear to support either <abbr> or <acronym>

Though I still use it and ignore IE6's inability to render it.

What's the point of using either when the output is the same as if no tag
were used?
For instance, what if I use <abbr>Fumbling Bunch of Idiots</abbr> instead of
just saying FBI [fumbling bunch of idiots]?

Seems to me it's totally useless coding.

 

[Richard]

kayodeok wrote:

That is one school of thought. The other is that abbreviations formed by
taking the first part of each word and sticking them together are
acronyms. So the following are acronyms:

USA
UK

Wrong! Neither Usa nor UK is a word.

Laser
UNICEF

and the following are not:

Of course, most people (from either school of thought) agree that all
acronyms are abbreviations, but not all abbreviations are acronyms.

It is primarily because of this confusion that <acronym/> is being
ditched in XHTML 2. So instead use <abbr/> always.

As an aside, it is believed that the <acronym/> element was slipped into
the HTML 4.0 specification as an April Fools' Day joke. If you check the
HTML 4.0 (not 4.01) spec, you'll see it was published on 1 April 1997.

Lastly, why is 'abbreviation' such a very long word?

 

[kayodeok]

What could be the advantage for a visitor?? Everybody knows what
is meant by USA as well as radar.

How about FUD?

Not everyone knows what FUD is but everyone knows what it means when
written out in full (Fear Uncertainty Doubt)

 

[kayodeok]

Use <abbr title="United States of America"> for USA and
<acronym title="Radio Detection And Ranging"> for Radar.

Output would actually be RDAR. Not RaDAR.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?p=dict&String=exact&Acronym=RADAR

What's the point of using either when the output is the same as
if no tag were used?
For instance, what if I use <abbr>Fumbling Bunch of
Idiots</abbr> instead of just saying FBI [fumbling bunch of
idiots]?

That is not the correct usage of <abbr>
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/text.html#h-9.2.1

 

[Brian]

What about those who do know the shortened version, but not the full?
There are people who make web pages who don't know what "html" stands
for.

Why is that an either/or proposition?

Isn't it better to use: <acronym title="a compressed graphical
format">GIF</acronym>?

I don't think so. The title of an acronym element isn't meant to
replace the dl element.

 

[Michael Wilcox]

Is <abbr> = <acronym>?

<acronym> would be used when defining a set of letters derived from a group
of words. Each letter in an acronym stands for another word or part of a
word. A text-to-speech browser would probably pronounce this letter by
letter, unless defined differently with CSS aural style sheets.

<abbr> would be for other shortened forms of (usually) single words. Example
include Dr., Mr., Mrs., esp., etc.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

In any case, IE6 doesn't appear to support either <abbr> or <acronym>

IE 6 actually supports <acronym> but not <abbr>, which is very strange of
course (unless you know the history behind this).

Here support means that IE 6 correctly parses an <acronym> element, allows it
to be styled using CSS, and shows its title attribute value, if present, as a
tooltip on mouseover. This looks relatively good support to me.

But the important question is really whether you should use _either_ of these
elements. What do you wish to achieve? There seems to be a school of though
that regards such markup as a _replacement_ for explaining your abbreviations
and acronyms in normal text. That way, those elements could actually work
_against_ accessibility. More on this:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/html/abbr.html

 

[Nico Schuyt]

Is <abbr> = <acronym>?

http://diveintoaccessibility.org/day_17_defining_acronyms.html
"Several fellow markup-obsessed gurus have correctly pointed out that there
is an <abbr> tag for abbreviations. Unfortunately, no version of Internet
Explorer for Windows supports it; no tooltips show up at all. Use
<acronym>."
Nico