How to mark up titles
Greg Schmidt
short stories, movies, etc. I considered marking each of these up
with different classes. class=novel and class=movie would have
text-decoration:underline. class=story would have :before
{content:open-quote} and similar for :after. All of these could be
changed for different languages so that users would see the titles
highlighted in the way they are most accustomed.
The problem is that not all of this is universally (or at least
99.5%-ally) supported, and it will become quite confusing for the user
if there is nothing to set apart the titles. It also requires
significantly more HTML to say <div class="movie"> than <u>,
especially when it may be repeated 20 or 50 or 600 times on a page
(600 is the current worst-case scenario, and can only happen if the
user overrides some defaults in the search).
I guess my fundamental issue here is that using classes better
describes the content, but can get in the way of getting the message
across.
Have others run into this same issue? What's the general consensus
when the presentation is significant wrt understanding the content?
Does <u class="movie"> represent a reasonable compromise, or does it
in fact combine the worst of both worlds (meaningless markup made
longer)?
--
Greg Schmidt (gr...@trawna.com)
Trawna Publications (http://www.trawna.com/)
Fiction Into Film List (http://fictionintofilm.trawna.com/)
Seven Wonders of the Web (http://7ww.trawna.com/)
Jukka K. Korpela
> I have a site where much of the content consists of titles of
> novels, short stories, movies, etc. I considered marking each of
> these up with different classes.
I wonder why. Is there some specific gain to be expected? Can you post
a URL of a page that demonstrates this?
If you have _lots_ of titles on a page, I think the main consideration
should be whether they had better be presented _less_ differently from
each other and from normal text. I would even consider using CSS to
suggest that <cite> elements (the logical choice for book and movie
titles) be presented in upright style and not in italics as by default.
Italics might be useful inside running text when a title is mentioned,
but maybe not so in a large list of titles.
> class=novel and class=movie would
> have text-decoration:underline.
Why? That would surely cause confusion, since underlining normally
means a link on the Web.
> What's the general consensus
> when the presentation is significant wrt understanding the content?
Then the information should be presented using either document content
(normally words) or such HTML markup that can be expected to make a
difference under any circumstances.
If it is relevant to indicate, say, some entries in a list of literary
works as novels, you could put "(novel)" or "(N)" or
<img alt="(novel)" src="novel.png"> after the title or, if the list is
actually a table, into a separate column.
> Does <u class="movie"> represent a reasonable compromise,
No, it does not guarantee any distinction. It won't make a difference
in speech presentation, or on a browser which has been told by the user
not to use underlining for anything but links (by using a user style
sheet, presumably to avoid the above-mentioned confusion).
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Greg Schmidt
<jkor...@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
>Greg Schmidt <gr...@trawna.com> wrote:
>
>> I have a site where much of the content consists of titles of
>> novels, short stories, movies, etc. I considered marking each of
>> these up with different classes.
>
>I wonder why. Is there some specific gain to be expected?
The gain that I am thinking of is to better describe my data. It
isn't just some block of data that I'd like to underline, it's a movie
title. In XML I might define my own tags <movie>, <novel>, etc. (my
understanding of XML may be faulty; I haven't had cause to learn much
about it). In HTML/CSS the analog seemed to be the use of a class
attribute.
In English, movie titles are underlined, but in other languages they
may well be italicized, bolded, single quoted, double quoted, or
whatever. If I use <u>, then everyone sees them underlined. If I use
class=movie, I can easily change the presentation of the data for
different languages as required. Of course I can do language
negotiation in my script and generate different output based on that,
but this seems to spread fingers of awareness of the different
languages into more corners, which makes it that much harder to get it
right and keep it right.
>Can you post a URL of a page that demonstrates this?
Check http://fictionintofilm.trawna.com/movie/428 for one example.
(Yes, I know the masthead logo is ugly!) This page includes a movie
title (underlined), the name of a short story (quoted), a magazine
title (underlined) and several book titles (also underlined). For an
example of a longer page with more titles, try
http://fictionintofilm.trawna.com/sf.html
>If you have _lots_ of titles on a page, I think the main consideration
>should be whether they had better be presented _less_ differently from
>each other and from normal text. I would even consider using CSS to
>suggest that <cite> elements (the logical choice for book and movie
>titles) be presented in upright style and not in italics as by default.
>Italics might be useful inside running text when a title is mentioned,
>but maybe not so in a large list of titles.
I'm not convinced that the text I'm presenting are actually citations,
but then again I'm not convinced that they're not. I've read the
definition of cite/citation in three different dictionaries, and one
of them seems passingly like my particular use of information.
>> class=novel and class=movie would
>> have text-decoration:underline.
>
>Why? That would surely cause confusion, since underlining normally
>means a link on the Web.
They are underlined because that is how current English convention
denotes the titles of movies and novels. (See
http://writing.colostate.edu/references/sources/mla/pop2c.cfm for
reference.) This does bother me somewhat, but since links on these
pages are both underlined and a different colour, I hope that there is
sufficient distinction.
>> What's the general consensus
>> when the presentation is significant wrt understanding the content?
>
>Then the information should be presented using either document content
>(normally words) or such HTML markup that can be expected to make a
>difference under any circumstances.
I might be able to get away with not using any markup on the various
titles, and trusting to context to convey the meaning. However, I
believe that this may become confusing in some circumstances.
The main point that I'm waffling over is whether underlining a movie
title is an important part of the content (and hence best handled with
<u> in the HTML) or if it is simply formatting information (and hence
best handled with CSS classes). By "best" here I don't mean to imply
"most standards compliant" or "most technically whizzy", but rather
"most true to the nature of the data".
>If it is relevant to indicate, say, some entries in a list of literary
>works as novels, you could put "(novel)" or "(N)" or
><img alt="(novel)" src="novel.png"> after the title or, if the list is
>actually a table, into a separate column.
>
>> Does <u class="movie"> represent a reasonable compromise,
>
>No, it does not guarantee any distinction. It won't make a difference
>in speech presentation, or on a browser which has been told by the user
>not to use underlining for anything but links (by using a user style
>sheet, presumably to avoid the above-mentioned confusion).
That's what I thought too.
Good points, and much food for thought. Thanks.
Stan Brown
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:
>In English, movie titles are underlined,
Only if for some reason italics are not available.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
"I am the very model of a Usenet personality" by Tom Holt:
http://hem.fyristorg.com/gumby/holt/onthenet/usenetpersonality.html
Greg Schmidt
<the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>Greg Schmidt <gr...@trawna.com> wrote in
>comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:
>>In English, movie titles are underlined,
>
>Only if for some reason italics are not available.
Is this specified somewhere?
http://writing.colostate.edu/references/sources/mla/pop2c8.cfm#1
indicates that underlining is appropriate. http://www.allmovie.com/
and http://www.imdb.com/ put movie titles in italics when they appear
in text, but not when they are in a list (as is the case on my site).
Jukka K. Korpela
>>>In English, movie titles are underlined,
>>
>>Only if for some reason italics are not available.
>
> Is this specified somewhere?
The good old "Elements of Style" uses italics, not underlining, for
titles of literary works, and mentions underlining ("underscoring")
only as a surrogate:
"Use italics (indicated in manuscript by underscoring), except in
writing for a periodical that follows a different practice."
Ref.: http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk2.html
I don't see why movie titles would be different. If you wish to make a
difference between book and movie titles, use words or other symbols if
the difference is essential, some styling (e.g., different color, or
different font face, or maybe background color - but especially on the
Web, underlining would be a poor choice).
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Greg Schmidt
Okay, I'm almost convinced that I should change some of my formatting
from underlined to italics. All of this is tangential to the original
question though, which was (restated in a generic form; please read
the rest of the thread for my views of the pros and cons of both
methods): To apply some formatting to the titles of movies, novels,
etc., and taking into account all relevant facts such as compatibility
with downlevel browsers and variations in notational convention
between languages, is it more appropriate to format them directly in
the HTML (e.g. <i></i>, <u></u>, "") or by using CSS classes?
Jukka K. Korpela
> Okay, I'm almost convinced that I should change some of my
> formatting from underlined to italics.
That's not quite what _I_ wanted to convince you of. :-) Italics, not
underlining, is the common convention. But what I first wrote was
whether the titles need to look different from normal text at all. If
the basic content of a page is, say, a table with titles in one column,
should these titles appear in italics, or in normal upright style? Is
there a particular reason to italicize all text in a column with column
header "Title"?
One of the nice features of delegating presentation to CSS is that you
can use logical <cite> markup in such a column and decide separately,
and perhaps much later, what the preferred visual presentation is.
> All of this is tangential
> to the original question though,
Maybe not. The mere possibility of getting convinced of a need to
change the visual appearance is a relevant reason to separate content
and presentation, i.e. to use logical HTML markup and to make
presentational suggestions in CSS only. There are situations where we
might deviate from this principle, but I don't think this is one of
them.
(Admittedly, you could use, say, <u>...</u>, and later change your mind
by writing
u { text-decoration: none; font-style: italic; }
into a style sheet, but wouldn't that look a bit odd? :-) )
> To apply some formatting to the titles
> of movies, novels, etc., and taking into account all relevant facts
> such as compatibility with downlevel browsers and variations in
> notational convention between languages, is it more appropriate to
> format them directly in the HTML (e.g. <i></i>, <u></u>, "") or by
> using CSS classes?
The appropriate markup for titles is <cite>. If you don't want to use
it, then <span class="title"> is the second best. But with <cite> you
can use classes in a natural way (e.g., <cite class="movie">) _if
desired_. I still haven't seen a reason to style, say, movie titles as
differently from book titles, but I might be able to imagine one.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Stan Brown
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:
>On Fri, 20 Dec 2002 10:48:40 -0500, Stan Brown
><the_sta...@fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
>>Greg Schmidt <gr...@trawna.com> wrote in
>>comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets:
>>>In English, movie titles are underlined,
>>
>>Only if for some reason italics are not available.
>
>Is this specified somewhere?
>http://writing.colostate.edu/references/sources/mla/pop2c8.cfm#1
>indicates that underlining is appropriate.
Look at the example: it's assuming that all you have to work with is
a typewriter. The assumption should be stated, but isn't (at least
not on that page).
Any freshman comp. textbook will tell you that titles of some things
are put in quotes and titles of other things are italicized. Book
and movie titles are treated exactly the same: italicize.
It is a separate rule, much less important now than 20 years ago,
that if you can't italicize you use underlining to stand in for the
italics. Titles are not special in this regard, since the same rule
applies to anything that should be italicized, like foreign words.