Styling abbreviations and acronyms

I wrote an article on abbreviations about three years ago that discussed the basics of abbreviations. Aspects of the article were slightly misleading and I have been meaning to update the information for a long time.

A modified version of Styling abbreviations and acronyms is now online – based on a post sent to the WSG some time ago.

Why is this article different to any other article on the topic?

  1. There is a discussion on the difference between Abbreviations, Initialisms, Contractions and Acronyms. Contractions in particular seem to rarely get a mention.
  2. The article suggests styling the <abbr> and <acronym> elements using “border-bottom: .1em dotted” instead of the traditional “border-bottom: 1px dotted #000“.

Why would you specify the border-width with ems? And more importantly, why would you leave off the color value? The article, and sample will hopefully explain the answer…

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Date: 25 July 2006
Author: Russ Weakley
Category: Articles, CSS, HTML, Web
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