It’s not really misnamed, that was just me being brash. The problem is that XHTML allows for two different tags that do exactly the same thing: <abbr> and <acronym>. I suppose you could make the argument that they are subtly different in the way that people argue for the need for the other identical pairs (<b> and <strong>, <i> and <em>, etc.), but those are weak arguments, in my opinion.

My current preference for (mis)using the <acronym> tag to provide a parenthetical phrase is borrowed from my fellow blog buddy, sgazzetti. I like the way that parenthetical remarks can be hidden away so that the text flows more cleanly, and the extra information, if desired, can be attained by hovering over the dotted-underlined text. It makes the comments more optional than using standard parentheses.

What I meant was that it would be nice if there were a <paren> tag that would provide similar functionality. Of course the proper way to do what I’m doing is to use a <span class=”parenthetical” title=”whatever”>, but I’ve been too lazy to do that so far. At some point, I’d like to write a program to run through my blog database and convert everything to proper XHTML Strict. I will probably remedy my naughty acronyming then.

What proof do you have that <acronym> tag is misnamed?

If it is misnamed then what tag do we use to improve the accessibility for acronyms?

The <acronym> tag is misnamed. I use it as if it were a <parenthetical> tag.

The comment preview should use your gravatar.com avatar now. Change the email field to my or sgazzetti’s email address and you’ll see what I mean.

Try out the diagnostic.

Ha.

As I am typing this comment I cannot help but notice a very strange icon attached to my name. I don’t know what this is about but am, to quote sgazzetti, fibrillating with excitement to find out what happens when I hit “submit comment” in a few seconds.