TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: Citing HTML tags in docs? From:Linda Sherman <linsherm -at- GTE -dot- NET> Date:Tue, 10 Nov 1998 21:17:00 -0500
Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" ) wrote:
>
> Susan Kocher asked for advice on referring to HTML tags in
> documentation:
>
> <<The question arises, should we use uppercase in naming tags and
> attributes Lower case? Should tag names have angle brackets around
> them when we refer to them in paragraph text?>>
>
> If it's an instructional book, don't create any distance between the
> reader and the concept by making the citation in the text look
> different from the citation in the code: that requires extra skull
> sweat.
That's nice in theory, but in practice, HTML text-based editors are
becoming increasingly sophisticated about formatting tags and attributes
on the fly, so what it looks like in the text file isn't necessarily
what the coder sees on the screen--or winds up saving back to disk when
done.
I would recommend using upper case in documentation, as that's what
nearly everyone else does (check out "how to code HTML" books at any
bookstore). Any HTML coder who gets confused between <A> and <a>
shouldn't be touching the stuff anyway.
L.
--
Linda K. Sherman <linsherm -at- gte -dot- net>
Freelance Writer: Technical - Business - Government