WingColors Thread: Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

Oli — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 03:06:34

I was tempted to agree then I checked define:acronym in google and the first result was:

A word formed from the initial letters of a series of words. (eg, IEEE is an acronym for Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers).

Some examples agree with you too though.

I'm still tempted to agree with you.

Edit: Grammar Girl is with you. I'm with you.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

AndrewIngram — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 02:58:08

CSS and HTML aren't acronyms, they're just plain old initialisms.

Acronyms are abbreviations pronounced as words, like NATO and PIN.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

Oli — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:30:19

You don't really program CSS or HTML, they're just mark-up languages. That is: they merely explain to a browser how the text should appear.

Semantics. Telling the user-agent how to display the page is programming.

These sorts of redundancies ("PIN number") or incorrectnesses ("inline CSS") involving an acronym happen when the acronym is understood as its subject without having to be translated out into its composite words.

If a cashier told people here to enter their personal identification numbers in, I'm sure most would give them a quizzical look and ask if they meant the PIN. In some (even many) cases people actually forget what the acronyms they use daily stand for.

This happens even more in the technology world: DVD, HDMI, HTML, IP, POP3, URL, UPnP, VGA - all terms people put about with gay abandon with only a few confidently knowing what they stand for.

CSS moreso because "CSS" has the additional meaning of being the name of the "programming language" (or grammar or syntax or whatever you call it to get to sleep at night) used in cascading stylesheets, inline styles and wherever else you can use them in the context of HTML and web browsers.

The short and curlies of this is: get used to it. Meanings of words change with popular opinion and use, and as an acronym gains popularity, it's likely to be used as its own word.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

wrttnwrd — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 21:38:22

AFAIK it's AOK to use CSS in that context :)

I'll stop.

I believe you can properly say you're using CSS in the HTML doc. The 'cascading' part means that what you use within your XHTML markup will generally overrule the CSS markup in the style sheet, etc..

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

RightOn — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:03:15

I think it's more of a case of you being all OCD about it... most people know what PIN means and still say PIN number to make sure people know they're expecting a number string.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

JeffJ — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:58:39

I think it's more that I just get frustrated when the term is constantly misused because it shows how people really don't know what it means or understand its application.

This whole argument is based on a bigger pet peeve, which is general misuse of acronyms. I'm not sure why it bugs me so much, but I guess it has something to do with people becoming comfortable with using them when they probably don't understand the concept.

A pretty good example would be when someone says "PIN number". Well, it's Personal Identification Number, so you're being kind of redundant there buddy.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

RightOn — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 23:13:23

I guess if you want to be all technical, you could say "I'm adding Stlyes to my HTML since CSS would normally mean you're linking to a style sheet.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

davidhayes — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 22:58:28

@Oli
You don't really program CSS or HTML, they're just mark-up languages. That is: they merely explain to a browser how the text should appear.

External CSS sheets usually do end with the .css extension, but you can put a stylesheet within an HTML file rather than calling the remote sheet within the CSS file.

So, JeffJ, I guess it really depends on whether they're really putting CSS into the HTML file (something I think it silly but certainly can be done) or if they're just separately adding style elements to HTML, in which case they wouldn't really be adding CSS. I agree that external files are both easier to use and more convenient to change, but that doesn't stop people from putting CSS in HTML files. I hope I answered your question somewhere in there.

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

Oli — Sat, 18 Aug 2007 14:17:12

What's the language you program external CSS documents in? CSS, right?

Acronym Misuse: CSS In Your HTML Doc

JeffJ — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:14:02

Alright, I guess this is probably just a pet peeve and I might even be wrong on the issue, but I'd like to get some second opinions on this. Correct me if I'm wrong anywhere in this note, please.

Now, style information has been a part of html for a long time. For all I know it's always been there. It would logically make sense that it has, I've just never tried to find out. I think everyone is clear on what style information is and what it does though.

Recently this information has been organized into external files, which we affectionately call a cascading style sheets, hence the acronym CSS. So a piece of me dies every time someone says they're putting some CSS in their HTML. You're putting style information into your HTML, you'd have a nice cascading style sheet or maybe several if you organized all this style information into external files. What gives?