Psychology and usefulness

Ka-Ping Yee ([email protected])
Mon, 17 Jul 1995 00:34:23 -0400


In article <[email protected]>,
Alan J Flavell <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>I'm going to admit that when I'm marking up pages in a hurry, I
>do tend to use <b> and <i> when I really mean em or strong. But I
>don't extol that as a virtue - I know it's poor style.

You know, there's some very unfortunate human psychology happening
here. When HTML was designed, why did they have to make <b> and
<i> so much SHORTER than <em> and <strong> ? Everyone shrinks away
a little from typing six times as much everywhere they want emphasis...

And so people take the easiest way out. (I declare myself guilty
on some occasions as well.) But i do hope that these kinds of issues
will no longer be ignored. Sure, we want a good content-based standard,
but it doesn't hurt to have one that people tend to use because it has
more apparent convenience.

Ping (Ka-Ping Yee): 2B Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
[email protected] | 62A Churchill St, Waterloo N2L 2X2, 519 886-3947
CWSF 89, 90, 92; LIYSF 90, 91; Shad Valley 92; DOE 93; IMO 91, 93; ACMIPC 94
* Skuld * Amano Ai * Hiyama Hikaru * Tendou Akane * Ayukawa Madoka *
WWW maintainer for the Canadian Space Agency: <http://www.dsm.sp-agency.ca/>