Heal Your Church WebSite

‘B and BReakfast markup’ is a handy mnemonic mechanism to memorize not to semantically collude your online sermons and studies with misused < b > and < br > taggery.

At some point, those of us fielding sermons, Bible studies and other topical texts online are going to have to stop with the crufty, deprecated and semantic hostile use of sectional markup.

Here’s what I mean - based on what Tantek Çelik meant way back on 2002 when this topic of B&BR markup was first broached:

Bed

Stop using that old < b >old tag to identify titles, headings and sections of your online documents. Instead, use the tags as God and nature intended.

BReakfast

Sermons are long-winded enough, no need to add to the tedium with an single html paragraph demarked with double line break tags < br > < br >. Instead … and hang in there with me folks … use the < p > aragraph tag to encapsulate paragraphs.

Why you ask? Quite simply so your underlying (x)HTML markup better represents
the intended meaning and structure of your online document. For example,
semantically, which markup better represents the intended meaning of the author:

<b><font size="4">John 11:35</font></b>
<br /><br />

<b>Jesus wept.</b><br /><br />
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut id felis. Fusce ut neque. Sed arcu arcu, iaculis sit amet, auctor posuere, blandit non, tellus. Suspendisse id urna. Curabitur sagittis.</p>

versus

<h2>John 11:35</h2>

<h3>Jesus wept.</h3>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut id felis. Fusce ut neque. Sed arcu arcu, iaculis sit amet, auctor posuere, blandit non, tellus. Suspendisse id urna. Curabitur sagittis.</p></p>

 

I’d argue that the second example of markup better reflects what the meaning of the message. Then again, some of you ‘view source’ types might argue:

<dl>
<dt>John 11:35</dt>

<dd><h4>Jesus wept.</h4>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut id felis. Fusce ut neque. Sed arcu arcu, iaculis sit amet, auctor posuere, blandit non, tellus. Suspendisse id urna. Curabitur sagittis.</p>
</dd>

</dl>

Point is - are you still using (x)HTML markup that leads various aggregators, readers and other mechanisms that would otherwise better and/or more correctly convey your messages?

Well then stop doing that!

There’s enough existing (x)HTML taggery out there to make your markup match the meaning of your message. Trust me, you’ll thank me for this when you eventually publish a book and/or study guide based on your blogged sermons.

Meanwhile, for those of you missing the point of this post and going directly to ‘view source’ … I left you some nifty markup gifties to talk about intentionally !-)

Stumble it!