I need help

[Looney]

I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my website.
Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.

What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?

Looney

 

[dorayme]

I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my website.
Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.

What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?

Erase them.

 

[Nico Schuyt]

I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my
website. Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.
What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?

If you use FrontPage: search in Google on: frontpage <span lang="en"> and
read: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q311574

 

[Looney]

"Nico Schuyt" <nschuyt(AT)gmail(DOT)com> wrote in message
| Looney wrote:
| > I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my
| > website. Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.
| > What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?
|
| If you use FrontPage: search in Google on: frontpage <span lang="en"> and
| read: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q311574
|
|
|

Thank you very very much!
This helped a lot!

And I'm certainly going to erase these span-lang-s.

Looney

 

[Lars Eighner]

I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my website.
Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.

What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?

I think the question turns on whether there is any useful purpose being
served. How are foreign words and phrases treated in print in your
language?

In English, it is customary to use italics for foreign words and phrases.
Marking them with EM is wrong because a italic font in this case does not
indicate emphasis. Marking them with I is not logical markup. So it might
be useful in English to use SPAN for logical markup and to style it in
accord with the conventions of English typography so that <span
lang="de">gift</span> would be both logically and typographically distinct
from gift. Of course, <span lang="fr">h&ocirc;tel</span> would be pointless
in most contexts because hotel is now a thoroughly naturalized English word.

You may wish to consider the typographical conventions of your own language.
These tags do seem to represent some information that would be easy to
destroy and difficult to restore. If it is useless information, delete it,
but think whether it is useless first.

 

[Looney]

| In our last episode, <[email protected]>, the lovely and
talented
| Looney broadcast on alt.html:
|
| > I recently noticed that I have a lot of span-s in html code of my
website.
| > Every third sentence is marked like this: <span lang="en">.
|
| > What should I do? To erase all span tags or to leave it like that?
|
| I think the question turns on whether there is any useful purpose being
| served. How are foreign words and phrases treated in print in your
| language?
|
| In English, it is customary to use italics for foreign words and phrases.
| Marking them with EM is wrong because a italic font in this case does not
| indicate emphasis. Marking them with I is not logical markup. So it
might
| be useful in English to use SPAN for logical markup and to style it in
| accord with the conventions of English typography so that <span
| lang="de">gift</span> would be both logically and typographically distinct
| from gift. Of course, <span lang="fr">h&ocirc;tel</span> would be
pointless
| in most contexts because hotel is now a thoroughly naturalized English
word.
|
| You may wish to consider the typographical conventions of your own
language.
| These tags do seem to represent some information that would be easy to
| destroy and difficult to restore. If it is useless information, delete
it,
| but think whether it is useless first.
|
| --
| Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> (e-mail address removed)
| Countdown: 232 days to go.

Thanks for telling me this.
But the reason of spans in my case is:

"If you set the page language to a language different from the keyboard
language, any text that you type on the page is encapsulated with the
following tag:
<span lang="keyboard language code">"

Thx all!
Looney

 

[Lars Eighner]

"If you set the page language to a language different from the keyboard
language, any text that you type on the page is encapsulated with the
following tag:
<span lang="keyboard language code">"

I suppose this could provide a useful clue for automatic translation.
If you expect your pages to be around once automatic translation is
something other than a joke, maybe these tags would be worth a second
thought. However for marking up deathless literature, HTML is probably not
the best choice.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Lars Eighner:

I suppose this could provide a useful clue for automatic translation.

A wrong clue when done the FrontPage way. It inserts the markup
depending on "keyboard language" setting. That's absurd. I'm using a
de-facto standard Finnish keyboard. Guess which settings I'm using? (You
guessed wrong, but they're surely not English settings.) It's part of
the vendors' cluelessness to bind keyboard settings to languages, but
the worse part is the use of the implied disinformation in generating
markup.

If you expect your pages to be around once automatic translation is
something other than a joke,

It has been much more than a joke for years, though of course it is
_also_ a rich source of humor.

maybe these tags would be worth a second thought.

Language markup is useful for a few reasons, including the fact that if
you open an HTML document in Word, it will pay attention to lang="..."
attributes when you do spelling and grammar checks.

But the attributes must be _correct_. Otherwise they of course hurt
instead of helping.

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Scripsit Lars Eighner:

In English, it is customary to use italics for foreign words and
phrases.

According to reputable style manuals, it is not. They have specific
recommendations, which suggest italics under _some_ circumstances for
foreign expressions, but mostly not.

Marking them with EM is wrong because a italic font in this
case does not indicate emphasis.
Right.

Marking them with I is not logical markup.

On the contrary, it is the most logical markup available. It says "I
want this to appear in italics, and I'm not saying why, and I'm not
saying anything else about it".

So it might be useful in English to use SPAN for logical
markup and to style it in accord with the conventions of English
typography

No, it wouldn't.

so that <span lang="de">gift</span> would be both
logically and typographically distinct from gift.

It should not be italicized, except in some situations, but such markup
would be logical and it might help when you spell check your document
(see my other posting in this thread): the checker would inform about a
misspelling, since the German word is written capitalized (Gift).

Of course, <span
lang="fr">h&ocirc;tel</span> would be pointless in most contexts
because hotel is now a thoroughly naturalized English word.

The language of that word, when used in English texts, is debatable, but
I would say that it is French when you spell it with ô (o with
circumflex).