Acronyms and abbreviations
The abbr
element
indicates that text is an abbreviation: a shortened form of a word
ending in a period, such as Mass., Inc., or etc. Acronyms (indicated
with the acronym
element) are
abbreviations formed from the initial letters or groups of letters of
words in a phrase, such as WWW and USA. An acronym may be pronounced
as a word (NATO) or letter by letter (FBI).
The title
attribute may be
added to either element to provide the full name or longer form. The
value of the title
attribute may be
displayed as a “tool tip” by visual browsers, or read aloud by a
speech device.
<acronym
title
="National Aeronautics and Space Administration">
NASA</acronym>
<abbr title
="Tablespoons">
Tbs.</abbr>
Marking up shorthand terms such as abbreviations and acronyms provides useful information on how they should be interpreted by user agents such as spellcheckers, aural devices, and search-engine indexers. It also improves the accessibility of the content.
Tip
The CSS 2.1 specification provides the informative speak
aural property that allows authors
to specify whether an acronym should be read as a word or spoken
letter by letter, as shown here:
acronym#FBI {speak: spell-out;}
The speak
property is
documented in Appendix B.
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