<abbr> and <acronym>

[Marcus Stollsteimer]

Hi group,

I am wondering:

1. how should these elements be best used (and what is a good reason
for using them in the first place)? When the meaning of the
abbreviation is not clear, it should be explained in the _text_, not
in the title attribute, shouldn't it?

2. what is the difference between them (or: why not always use
<abbr>)?

I would appreciate some hints regarding these questions.

Regards,
Marcus

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Hi group,

I am wondering:

1. how should these elements be best used (and what is a good reason
for using them in the first place)? When the meaning of the
abbreviation is not clear, it should be explained in the _text_, not
in the title attribute, shouldn't it?

2. what is the difference between them (or: why not always use
<abbr>)?

I would appreciate some hints regarding these questions.

Because they are not the same, some abbreviations can be acronyms but
not all abbreviations are acronyms.

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=abbreviation
Dictionary.com/abbreviation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbreviation
Abbreviation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=acronym
Dictionary.com/acronym

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym
Acronym and initialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Marcus Stollsteimer]

Because they are not the same, some abbreviations can be acronyms
but not all abbreviations are acronyms.

Thanks for the reply, but I am not that ignorant...

The point is: all acronyms are abbreviations.

So: what's the use of the <acronym> element?
Why not just always use <abbr>? Is it for some reason
important to know that some abbreviation is an acronym?

Regards,
Marcus

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

The point is: all acronyms are abbreviations.

What word is RADAR an abbreviation for?

 

[Marcus Stollsteimer]

What word is RADAR an abbreviation for?

rather off-topic:

RAdio Detection And Ranging

Regards,
Marcus

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

rather off-topic:

RAdio Detection And Ranging

That is four words. Your comment: "all acronyms are abbreviations"
has just been proved .. um .. false?

 

[Marcus Stollsteimer]

That is four words. Your comment: "all acronyms are abbreviations"
has just been proved .. um .. false?

Absolutely not: who said that an abbreviation has to be an
abbreviation for only *one* word???

Wikipedia: "Acronyms and initialisms are abbreviations such as NATO,
laser, or scuba, ..."

And please stop splitting hairs, I really would appreciate some
serious replies to my original post.

Regards,
Marcus

 

[Nick Theodorakis]

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

I really would appreciate some
serious replies to my original post.

As far as I can tell, the reason why <acronym> persits is because IE
supports styles and title attributes for <acronym> but doesn't seem to
know anything about <abbr> (at least up to v.6, anyway; I don't know
what IE7 is doing).

Nick

 

[russ_marion]

RADAR is also a palindrome

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Jonathan N. Little wrote:




Thanks for the reply, but I am not that ignorant...

The point is: all acronyms are abbreviations.

So: what's the use of the <acronym> element?
Why not just always use <abbr>? Is it for some reason
important to know that some abbreviation is an acronym?

You asked what the difference was, I told you. If you want to use <abbr>
for all, so be it, if you want to be more specific for your acronyms
then use <acronym> [shrugs] One note though, you of course know that
Billy's IE doesn't recognize the <abbr> element...

With respect to #1, sure no one is preventing you from putting a
definition with your text, or better yet, make it a link to a glossary page!

 

[Marcus Stollsteimer]

You asked what the difference was, I told you.

of course I meant the difference of the HTML elements

If you want to use
<abbr> for all, so be it, if you want to be more specific for your
acronyms then use <acronym> [shrugs] One note though, you of course
know that Billy's IE doesn't recognize the <abbr> element...

now that is some information

With respect to #1, sure no one is preventing you from putting a
definition with your text, or better yet, make it a link to a
glossary page!

Regards,
Marcus

 

[Jim Moe]

2. what is the difference between them (or: why not always use
<abbr>)?

The primary reason for choosing <acronym> over <abbr> is that IE
completely ignores <abbr>.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

The primary reason for choosing <acronym> over <abbr> is that IE
completely ignores <abbr>.

It would be extremely rude to mark-up a non-acronym abbreviation as
<acronym> merely for the purpose of pandering to IE (<=6).

There *are* other solutions, after all.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Jonathan N. Little wrote:




of course I meant the difference of the HTML elements

1. twice the number of letters
2. 2 B's or C,O,N,Y, & M!

;-)

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

The primary reason for choosing <acronym> over <abbr> is that IE
completely ignores <abbr>.

Ignore IE right back!

 

[Spartanicus]

1. how should these elements be best used (and what is a good reason
for using them in the first place)?

You've not told us what qualifications you would apply to consider
something a "good" reason. The basic reason to use most markup is to
apply structure and semantics to the content. In that sense
abbreviations and acronyms are no different from headings and
paragraphs.

Things get shady when you start looking for real world practical
benefits. Some speech renderers can be configured to read out title
content for abbreviations and acronyms, but as you can imagine that
becomes a pain if the abbreviation is used more than once and title
content is provided every time.

In theory, for the benefit of speech agents abbreviations and acronyms
should be supplied with meta data that indicates whether it should be
spelled out or pronounced as a word (for example NATO). This can be done
with aural CSS, but the only clients that support the required CSS are
Emacspeak (used by practically no-one), and Opera. Opera's speech engine
is not installed by default, and Opera's speech capabilities are
intended to encourage development of applications that use voice
operation of the browser. Opera is not suitable to be used as an AT
browser.

AT speech renderers use built in lists of commonly used abbreviations
and render them in a pre configured way, some are spelled out, others
are expanded, regardless of whether the abbreviation is marked up or
naked.

When the meaning of the abbreviation is not clear

How would you know? whether or not *you* know the meaning of an
abbreviation doesn't mean that a visitor will know.

, it should be explained in the _text_, not
in the title attribute, shouldn't it?

Expanding an abbreviation in round brackets after it's first usage on a
page is a good practice when it can reasonably be expected that the
resource will be read from the top down. This may not work if the
resource is linked to with fragment anchors.

2. what is the difference between them (or: why not always use
<abbr>)?

IIRC the XHTML 2 proposals have dropped the <acronym> element because of
the reasoning you mentioned elsewhere in the thread: that acronyms are a
special form of abbreviations.

 

[Disco Octopus]

RADAR is also a palindrome

and a corporal.

 

[dorayme]

What word is RADAR an abbreviation for?

"radar" is not an acronym.

 

[Jim Moe]

It would be extremely rude to mark-up a non-acronym abbreviation as
<acronym> merely for the purpose of pandering to IE (<=6).

It is not wise to ignore the elephant in the living room.

 

[Andy Dingley]

It is not wise to ignore the elephant in the living room.

If we don't feed it, we're hoping that the elephant will waste away and
disappear. The elephant's child is already a sickly beast.