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Using a definition list for footnote/asterisked items

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From: Pete Fairhurst
Date: Nov 1, 2010 6:03AM

Hello again,

I've been thinking about how best you could markup footnotes in XHTML. I
like the numbered anchor/jump-to approach, but I was thinking about how to
make this more semantically richer over all.

Would placing the footnote items into a definition list be useful?
Specifically, I'm thinking of asterisked items as one site I work on
regularly requires their press releases be published online verbatim, and
these often include asterisked items within the main copy of the press
release.

What do you think? If I combined the numbered anchor/jump-to approach with
ID'd definition terms, inside a definition list at the foot of the page,
would that be more useful from an accessibility view.

I appreciate that, in the instance of asterisks in particular, this may not
be a very good use of semantics, but I'm interested to know other's thoughts
on this.

Thanks in advance.

- Pete

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"Haste in art is almost always vulgarisation." H.G. Wells