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Thread: Testimonial quotes and how to mark them up

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From: Lynn Holdsworth
Date: Tue, Dec 30 2014 1:44AM
Subject: Testimonial quotes and how to mark them up
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Hi all,

Do any of you have any thoughts on how to mark up short testimonial
quotes using HTML5? I want some way to associate the quote and the
name of the person who made it, but <blockquote> seems like overkill
and the <q> tag doesn't have any attributes to hook it to the quoter's
name.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Cheers, Lynn

From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Tue, Dec 30 2014 2:07AM
Subject: Re: Testimonial quotes and how to mark them up
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2014-12-30, 10:44, Lynn Holdsworth wrote:

> Do any of you have any thoughts on how to mark up short testimonial
> quotes using HTML5? I want some way to associate the quote and the
> name of the person who made it,

The common practice is to mention the name before or after the quoted
text, which is put in quotation marks. Long quotations are often set as
blocks, with the name mentioned before it or after it on a separate
credits line. Both quotation marks and setting as a block may fail to
convey the idea completely, especially in speech rendering, but usually
the context helps to understand where the quotation ends.

> but <blockquote> seems like overkill

In practice, it is just an indentation device. In theory, it should only
be used for quotations extracted from an external source, not for
original statements. A testimonial might be construed as a quotation of
spoken words, in principle. Anyway, the semantics of <blockquote> is
really just, well, “semantics.”

> and the <q> tag doesn't have any attributes to hook it to the quoter's
> name.

The <q> markup might now be appropriate for adding quotation marks,
since browsers that completely ignore it have become rare. Yet, it
normally offers no benefits over the use of quotation marks as
characters. Using the latter, you can make sure that the correct marks
are used.

It seems that you are looking for a way to associate quoted text with
the name of the quoted person (or other source) in markup. That’s an
interesting idea in principle, but mostly pointless. What matters is
whether a flow of words as such makes it clear to the reader or listener
that some part of the flow is quoted, where the quote starts, where it
ends, and who is being quoted (and, quite often, where the quote is from).

Theoretically, both <blockquote> and <q> may have the cite attribute,
with a URL value, but it is supposed to refer to the source of the
quotation, not the quoted person. The source could have markup of its
own to indicate its author, but I don’t think this is what you are
looking for.

Yucca

From: Lynn Holdsworth
Date: Tue, Dec 30 2014 2:29AM
Subject: Re: Testimonial quotes and how to mark them up
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Thanks very much Yucca. In the page I'm working with, the quoter's
name comes before their quotation, and I think it's likely that some
users will get confused and attribute the quotation to the name that
comes after it. So I wanted to associate the two.

If this was my own site I'd use an ARIA label, but it's not, and I'm
only able to make recommendations based on WCAG2. I guess I must leave
this one alone because I can't think of an easy, WCAG2-dependent way
for devs to associate the name and quotation.

On 30/12/2014, Jukka K. Korpela < = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = > wrote:
> 2014-12-30, 10:44, Lynn Holdsworth wrote:
>
>> Do any of you have any thoughts on how to mark up short testimonial
>> quotes using HTML5? I want some way to associate the quote and the
>> name of the person who made it,
>
> The common practice is to mention the name before or after the quoted
> text, which is put in quotation marks. Long quotations are often set as
> blocks, with the name mentioned before it or after it on a separate
> credits line. Both quotation marks and setting as a block may fail to
> convey the idea completely, especially in speech rendering, but usually
> the context helps to understand where the quotation ends.
>
>> but <blockquote> seems like overkill
>
> In practice, it is just an indentation device. In theory, it should only
> be used for quotations extracted from an external source, not for
> original statements. A testimonial might be construed as a quotation of
> spoken words, in principle. Anyway, the semantics of <blockquote> is
> really just, well, "semantics."
>
>> and the <q> tag doesn't have any attributes to hook it to the quoter's
>> name.
>
> The <q> markup might now be appropriate for adding quotation marks,
> since browsers that completely ignore it have become rare. Yet, it
> normally offers no benefits over the use of quotation marks as
> characters. Using the latter, you can make sure that the correct marks
> are used.
>
> It seems that you are looking for a way to associate quoted text with
> the name of the quoted person (or other source) in markup. That's an
> interesting idea in principle, but mostly pointless. What matters is
> whether a flow of words as such makes it clear to the reader or listener
> that some part of the flow is quoted, where the quote starts, where it
> ends, and who is being quoted (and, quite often, where the quote is from).
>
> Theoretically, both <blockquote> and <q> may have the cite attribute,
> with a URL value, but it is supposed to refer to the source of the
> quotation, not the quoted person. The source could have markup of its
> own to indicate its author, but I don't think this is what you are
> looking for.
>
> Yucca
>
>
> > > >