molly.com
Sunday 27 February 2005
the meaning of semantics
WHAT IS MEANING? Check out my new article The Meaning of Semantics for beginning to intermediate readers at InformIT. Here’s a little sample:
Some of the elements we’ve misused are also some of markup’s most critical ones. Take the
pelement, which is used to denote paragraphs, and thebrelement, used to force a line break. Anyone ever commit this markup crime?
<p><br><br>If you place the line above in a document between some text sections, you’ll get some white space, but the markup has absolutely no meaning. A paragraph tag should be used to denote a paragraph, period. A line break should be used to force a break in a line, not to gain white space.
I should be taken to markup prison and/or fined for having done this for years! Fortunately, I’ve got CSS by my side now, and can get back to cleaner living.
I know the InformIT site isn’t to everyone’s tastes because of the ads and so on, but hey, that’s how they’re able to pay their authors. So I hope you’ll brave it out, or if you just want to go right to the print-friendly page, which is free of ads, you can do that here.
Filed under: standards, web design and development
Posted by: Molly | 10:37 am |
February 27th, 2005 at 12:33 pm
Good article. One quick note is the vague explanation of the
addresselement. It should only be used to mark up contact information for a document as opposed to all addresses. HTMLHelp describes it well.February 27th, 2005 at 12:46 pm
Hi Molly,
I’m Chris, this is my first comment on your blog
I just read the article and do of course agree with what you say…and yes, of course I am guilty, too
One thing which always strikes me when reading articles like yours, on CSS, on semantics, on validation (and yes, I religously believe in all of them) is: Why? This never gets explained. If there is a need to explain that semantics make sense, then there is also the need to eplain why. What for? How does it help me? Instead of just saying: Now we use CSS and therefore we’re just better people allround!
For example, why would the next client I am trying to pull in care whether my markup is semantic or not? he doesn’t even know what mark up is! So I tell him: “I will create you page which validates, which is table-less, which has pure CSS for layout, which has semantic markup.”
And he’ll say: “So what? Why is this interesting for me?”
And I’ll say that I’ll mark up his headlines with
etc, like in your example. And he’ll say: “So?”.
However if I say: I will markup up your headlines because then Google will attach more wieght to the keywords in your headline and place you better/more correctly, then jhe will say: “Sounds like a plan”. And if I say that my validating pages will be more accessible and allow more users to vsisit his site he’ll agree that’s a good thing. And if I say that keeping my presentation logic separated from my content so that content is universally accessible, so that search engines can read it better, and that maintenance costs will go down, that his site will be more flexible and interoperable, that they can interact witth other applications and tools, people and websites and…and…and…at that moment he will intervene and say: “May I pay you double?”
Well, ok, maybe not quite but you get the idea. I often find that we are bashing on what we consider deeply held beliefs because we know that they will make our products and the web as a whole better. But we often forget to mention that there are actually real reasons behind this which make sense not just to the web geek. And even some web geeks need convincing.
Just saying it shouldbe like this is not enough in my opinion.
Well, I wrote an entire article myself now…it’s just one of these things which have been bugging me again and again and it struck me when I read your article.
www.maccaws.org has started a great project about all this, I’m sure you’re familiar with it.
All the best
Chris
February 28th, 2005 at 3:18 am
Hi Molly. I haven’t commented for awhile…I visited your site yrs back…I honestly thought the design was more simple back then, being a designer myself. Honestly most of this stuff is over my head but I’m always open and willing to learn! I remember most of your posts were simple about your day too! My how complicated you’ve gotten! lol I wish you the best and hey, I’m gonna force myself to understand this stuff…someday…Take care!
February 28th, 2005 at 8:01 am
Chris-
Maybe before validation and accessibility, hit the client in the wallet and tell him how much bandwidth and therefore hosting costs you can save. I wonder if designers ever get a cut of bandwidth savings. Anyone?
February 28th, 2005 at 8:26 am
Dave, while I agree this is very true (of course I do, I want in on the profits!
) for most of my clients this is not an argument. They have bandwidth usage which falls nicely into most standard $7/month shared hosting and won’t notice the different in the wallet.
I agree very much for large sites however. My hobby page (www.mameworld.net) gets around 50.000 hits over the whole domain, 12.000 or so on the front page. When I converted it from tag soup to XHTML and pure CSS the monthly bandwidth went down from $200 to $125. Quite a difference!
Chris
February 28th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Hi Molly,
The phrase “semantic markup” is a personal bugbear for me
Imagine this scenario: I hand you a piece of paper with a list on it, you ask me what it is, and I say, “It’s a list”. I then hand you a piece of paper with a couple of sentences written on it. You again ask what it is, and I say, “It’s a paragraph”.
Do you have any idea what the list or the paragraph mean? Were my answers meaningful? Can you now process these pieces of information? “Ah…yes, a list, I file all my lists in the filing drawer labelled ‘lists’ and paragraphs go into the drawer below labelled ‘paragraphs’…”
Or were my answers devoid of any meaning, simply describing the presentation of the information, without actually expressing what the list is a list of, or what the paragraph was a paragraph about?
IMHO We have to get away from this deeply-misleading “semantic markup” label w.r.t (X)HTML. A better description is just “structural markup”: use the most appropriate document-structure tag available, if such a tag exists. If there isn’t an appropriate tag (e.g. document author) then… well, just make something up. Who cares that it creates a squillion different ways to markup an author’s name? No one would ever wish to search for other documents by the same author… would they?
Clearly, we only have the most basic, presentation-related semantics (or perhaps more clearly, syntax) available to us in (X)HTML: this is a heading, this is a quote displayed as a block, this is a list, this is a paragraph… etc.
Using the term “semantic markup” falsely associates document-/page-presentation markup with the Semantic Web (a web of information with well-defined meaning), and prompts endless, unproductive navel-gazing over what remains a profoundly-crude and limited syntax designed (badly) to markup academic papers. That the web is not used solely to publish academic papers is a testament to the ingenuity of webmasters, cheerfully forcing square pegs into round holes. It is certainly not a testament to the semantic richness of the tags available. We need semantic (i.e. meaningful) tags before we can start publishing semantic (X)HTML markup - assuming we want/need to do this at all.
February 28th, 2005 at 11:16 am
Thank you very much for this article. I’ve been looking for just such articles describing the concepts of semantics and standards rather than laundry lists of “DOs and DO NOTs”. Referencing your own past mistakes also adds a friendly, familiar voice to the information. These help immensely in my training of my team on good web design practices.
February 28th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
There is something to be said for the difference between selling “best practices” such as CSS and structural markup, and simply selling yourself and your abilities.
If one of my customers would like a crash course in best practices, I’m happy to give them one. But most don’t care. They want to know that YOU will provide them with what they need, and that YOU will take care of how the site functions, and that YOU are looking out for their best interests.
Frankly, once you have your customer’s trust and have properly sold yourself and your skill, the rest is usually moot.
Just my opinion.
March 2nd, 2005 at 3:12 am
I agree that there’s really no need to use < br > within a < p > however the only time I do use this is in song lyrics / poets. They really need to be broken in specific places (which are not paragraphs).
Example:-
Verse Line 1
Verse Line 2
Verse Line 3
…
Chorus Line 1
Chorus Line 2
Chorus Line 3
…
This is the best way I can see going about this. Each line in the song is for sure not a paragraph and the lines need to break in a specific place.
Maybe I’m missing something, anyone know a better solution?
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:29 am
Ben, maybe the
pretag would work there.Keith, I think you were replying to my comment. I agree 100%. I both work in-house for a company and freelance, and in both instances I try to use the best available practices at all times. It’s not a feature of my service, but my professional responsibility to understand and employ best practices. I’m hired to understand this stuff and not just implement. Unfortunately though, many still do see standards-based design as a line-item feature and abandon it based solely on the client’s concern. Frankly, clients will *never* be that interested in semantic mark-up. That’s why they’re clients.
March 2nd, 2005 at 11:49 am
Semantics and CSS for the Lovelorn
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a header,
And make a style that’s color:blue.
I’ll write some paragraphs so sweet.
I’ll use the p tag. It’s so neat.
Borders top and bottom.
Remember “trouble” and you’ve got ‘em.
Another style will say my line height’s looking better.
An ordered list for ways I love you.
I’m gonna sit right down and write myself a header,
And make a style that’s color:blue.
March 2nd, 2005 at 2:03 pm
I enjoyed reading your article and had a question in relation to your comments on the H1 element. You noted..
However, you also pointed out that most professionals believe there should be only one H1 element within a document. You probably already see where I’m going. What of the TITLE element? Does this not actually define what the document contains? Here is what the W3C spec on HTML 4.01 has to say about the title element:
It would seem to me the TITLE element already does what “most professionals” deem to be the purpose of the H1 element. What’s your thoughts on this?
March 2nd, 2005 at 7:04 pm
Not fair, stealing my article titles!
lol, doug
March 2nd, 2005 at 7:42 pm
Charles, that’s a good question and it struck me as well. After sniffing around however, I found a very unsatisfying explanation of the relationship between
h1andtitle.http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Use_h1_for_Title
This example tasks the
titleto carry 2 levels of information: page information (theh1) and collection information. Unfortunately, the W3C does not delve into the semantic value oftitle, instead attributing its value mechanisms removed from the document (http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/good-titles).March 25th, 2005 at 11:49 am
I just can’t believe that someone wrote a CSS poem based on a big band song.
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January 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
thanks all
January 5th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
YES : Keith, I think you were replying to my comment. I agree 100%. I both work in-house for a company and freelance, and in both instances I try to use the best available practices at all times. It’s not a feature of my service, but my professional responsibility to understand and employ best practices. I’m hired to understand this stuff and not just implement. Unfortunately though, many still do see standards-based design as a line-item feature and abandon it based solely on the client’s concern. Frankly, clients will *never* be that interested in semantic mark-up. That’s why they’re clients. hikayeyaz.com
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April 4th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
For example, why would the next client I am trying to pull in care whether my markup is semantic or not? he doesn’t even know what mark up is! So I tell him: “I will create you page which validates, which is table-less, which has pure CSS for layout, which has semantic markup.”
April 7th, 2008 at 2:12 am
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