That question brings up the perfect counterpoint to your entire post - as it begs the question:
Do you not practice graceful degradation?
Content should be able to stand on it’s own WITHOUT the stylesheet – it’s why I write my semantic markup before I even THINK about the CSS and my pages are usable without it. While I certainly do use stylesheets, a page should retain it’s usability and content WITHOUT them.
Which is another reason to put them in the content, not the stylesheet.
Of course, you omitted that user agents should NOT automatically insert them - at which point that recommendation about doing it with generated content seems silly.
If the CONTENT is supposed to have them, put them in the content NOT the style… That’s just common sense.
But then, don’t look for common sense in the HTML specifications, especially anything that’s informative and not normative. (hence the green and italics on those sections)
Honestly, it’s one of the parts of the spec that is another case of taking something simple, and making it needlessly annoyingly complex. It’s punctuation – why on earth would you put proper punctuation anywhere BUT the content? Again, that’s like putting periods, dollar signs, question marks in the CSS.
<strong class=“exclaim”>I can see it now</strong> <em class=“question”>Does the notion of entire paragraphs without punctuation <strong>REALLY</strong> seem like a good idea</em> <span class=“normal”>Sounds like it would just be a giant run-on at that point</span>
Red herring? That has nothing to do with this conversation.
Content should be able to stand on it’s own WITHOUT the stylesheet – it’s why I write my semantic markup before I even THINK about the CSS and my pages are usable without it. While I certainly do use stylesheets, a page should retain it’s usability and content WITHOUT them.
Which is another reason to put them in the content, not the stylesheet.
You mean quotation marks? There is no issue. All major browsers plus Lynx have default handling of Q and BLOCKQUOTE that clearly delimit quoted text. If you want a different rendering it is up to you to provide the typography via the style sheet.
Of course, you omitted that user agents should NOT automatically insert them - at which point that recommendation about doing it with generated content seems silly.
If the CONTENT is supposed to have them, put them in the content NOT the style… That’s just common sense.
Quotation marks are neither punctuation nor content. They are typographic delimiters. Our structural markup language, html, provides two tags for setting out quoted text.
But then, don’t look for common sense in the HTML specifications, especially anything that’s informative and not normative. (hence the green and italics on those sections)
That’s on the blockquote section, probably because there are multiple means of delimiting block quotes in common use. The section on Q is not italicized nor is it painted green.
Visual user agents must ensure that the content of the Q element is rendered with delimiting quotation marks. Authors should not put quotation marks at the beginning and end of the content of a Q element.
User agents should render quotation marks in a language-sensitive manner (see the lang attribute). Many languages adopt different quotation styles for outer and inner (nested) quotations, which should be respected by user-agents.
All four of the major graphic rendering engines insert the language dependent quotation marks, as does Lynx.
Honestly, it’s one of the parts of the spec that is another case of taking something simple, and making it needlessly annoyingly complex. It’s punctuation – why on earth would you put proper punctuation anywhere BUT the content? Again, that’s like putting periods, dollar signs, question marks in the CSS.
No, they’re typographic delimiters. Periods, and query marks are punctuation; big difference. The currency symbols are content.
<strong class=“exclaim”>I can see it now</strong> <em class=“question”>Does the notion of entire paragraphs without punctuation <strong>REALLY</strong> seem like a good idea</em> <span class=“normal”>Sounds like it would just be a giant run-on at that point</span>
And until type setters began marking paragraphs and quotes, text was just one big run-on.
Jason, you are being purposely obtuse to the point of having become dull, so I’m done.
Well, I am an English teacher, and I’ll give you a weaselly answer: you’re both right. Quotation marks are absolutely punctuation marks, and have been so since dinosaurs taught Fred and Wilma. However, they also serve a purpose as typographic delimiters, especially when you’re coding in HTML (and presumably other languages, though I can’t speak to those).
I might quibble with that. Quote marks were not used until the Baroque period. I would also argue that quote marks have no oral/aural purpose. Compare to the period, comma, semi-colon and colon, all of which have oral effects. Even the en dash, used where a range of values is indicated, e.g. Jan.–Mar., is usually verbalized as through or to, January through March. Others are partly grammatical and partly rhetorical, the interrogative, exclamation, parentheses, brackets, em dash and horizontal ellipsis (called low dots by typesetters).
The quote marks’ only purpose is to provide visual separation within written/printed text. There is no oral effect. Try it and see: Jane said “Jack will be late”. The comma was left out so the quoted text could be treated as non-verbatim. With or without marks, the oral rendering is unchanged. Additionally, using quote marks is only one of many options available for that purpose. Typewriters, manuscripts (other than illuminated) and pre-GUI computers had to rely on the quote mark, but typesetters, for both print and computer, have a wide variety of delimiters. Using a structural markup language does not mean the quoted text is not pointed. HTML provides the q and blockquote tags to mark quoted text. LaΤεΧ, a typesetting markup language application does the same,
\\begin{quote}text\\end{quote}
It is up to the macro (LaΤεΧ) or the stylesheet (html) to define the rendering.
I might quibble with that. Quote marks were not used until the Baroque period. I would also argue that quote marks have no oral/aural purpose. Compare to the period, comma, semi-colon and colon, all of which have oral effects. Even the en dash, used where a range of values is indicated, e.g. Jan.–Mar., is usually verbalized as through or to, January through March. Others are partly grammatical and partly rhetorical, the interrogative, exclamation, parentheses, brackets, em dash and horizontal ellipsis (called low dots by typesetters).