Having been reading some of Craig’s book that I mentioned a couple of days ago, I came across one piece in particular that stood out for the wrong reasons:
If you have to use an acronym, there is another tag you can use in your content that describes what it means. You don’t see them but a small dotted line appears under the word that when hovered over, displays what the acronym means. … The code behind the page looks like this:
<p>By ascertaining the appropriate mix of <acronym title="search engine marketing">SEM</acronym> techniques,…</p>
Now it may be harsh to pick up on such things, when the book is primarily about search engine optimisation rather than HTML / semantics / accessibility / usability per se, but the use of the acronym element instead of the abbr was a giant red flag to me. Either he meant to use the abbreviation element, or he pronounces something as a word that I feel most people would spell out.
This got me thinking, so I’ve written an article on how (I think it’s) best to use the abbr element to mark up abbreviations on the web.
Update: Craig read this article and has now amended his e-book to use the abbr element.
Gary, thank you SO much for all your help with my blog revamp. You're incredibly knowledgeable, incredibly thorough, and incredibly reasonable (and let's not forget incredibly patient with technological novices like me).
And through your creative connections, you served up a great new look for the blog that wonderfully complements my main site. I was skeptical at the outset that I needed it, but you made your case eloquently, and the feedback's been great so far. It's such a relief to know I now have a great resource to turn to in the future. If you've got a blog project on tap, or need technical support on an existing one, Gary's the man. He's got you covered so you can focus on what YOU do best...
PB
