Dialogue not Dialog

[Kawahee]

http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/cu ... rk/#dialog

I appreciate that HTML uses American English (hence <center> not <centre>), but real English (invented by the English) and American English both stipulate that the correct word for a conversation is dialogue, not dialog.

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q ... alog&meta=
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q ... ogue&meta=

The American Heritage Dictionary lists "dialog" as a variant of "dialogue", although the other dictionary's default to "dialogue":
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dialog

[zcorpan]

Right. So what do you suggest?

[Kawahee]

I'm sorry, I don't know whether the tag is new to HTML5 or not, but if it's new then it should be renamed. If it's existed prior to HTML5 perhaps <dialog> should be marked as deprecated and replaced with <dialogue>?

[zcorpan]

I'm sorry, I don't know whether the tag is new to HTML5 or not,

It's new.

but if it's new then it should be renamed.

Why? "dialogue" is two characters longer than "dialog". You said that "the American Heritage Dictionary lists "dialog" as a variant of "dialogue"", so both could be considered correct English according to that dictionary, no? Even if it wasn't, HTML element names are generally abbreviated for ease of authoring (consider <img> for instance).

[bfrohs]

but if it's new then it should be renamed.

Why? "dialogue" is two characters longer than "dialog". You said that "the American Heritage Dictionary lists "dialog" as a variant of "dialogue"", so both could be considered correct English according to that dictionary, no? Even if it wasn't, HTML element names are generally abbreviated for ease of authoring (consider <img> for instance).

I would have to agree with zcorpan. Although <dialogue> would be the correct way to write the tag, I would much rather type <dialog> when coding. Not only is it two characters shorter, but it also lets my right hand escape the home keys after 'o' rather than two characters later. It doesn't seem like much, but it does speed up the coding process.

[Cerbera]

Since American is (perhaps sadly) the most widespread variant of English, American terms are easier for most people to work with. (Consider color in CSS; it's not just HTML.)

Incidentally, centre has a different meaning to center in modern English: the former being a place where an activity is focussed (shopping centre) and the latter being a description of position (center of the dartboard). So using <center> for a positioning element is correct in English. Both meanings are written as center in American, IIRC, so it's correct in American as well. (It's somewhat like disc and disk.)

[guy]

Some HTML tags are convenient abbreviations, for example <img> for <image>. Why not treat <dialog> similarly, as a convenient abbreviation of <dialogue>?

[jetmuzer]

Some HTML tags are convenient abbreviations, for example <img> for <image>. Why not treat <dialog> similarly, as a convenient abbreviation of <dialogue>?

Is that so important? Maybe tags like <image> and <dialogue> looks more readable, but tags <img> and <dialog> is more writable, i mean it's shortly and simply

[Siemova]

I'm American and generally don't care for British spelling conventions, but here I actually agree with the OP. This was something that bugged me a little when I came across it while reading through the draft. In the usage I have seen, "dialog" connotates a choice or notification being presented to the user by a computer, whereas "dialogue" means conversation between people. I would hate to see the HTML spec degrade English spelling further simply for the sake of saving a couple of keystrokes (or saving none, if your IDE auto-completes code). It would be like writing "kwik" because the correctness of "quick" isn't worth the time it takes to type that fifth letter, and hey, everybody knows what you mean anyway...

[lyosha]

What about making them synonyms in html?

[campax]

when i first read the TOC of HTML5 i saw dialog and I tought:

"a standarized and declarative way to create dialogs?"

you know, those annoying little windows prompting for input

then i read the prose and was quite disappointed


but what i mean here is:

what if sometime in the future we want a standarized and declative way to create dialog windows?

obviously the most intuitive tag name will be <dialog>, but we won't be able to use it, because already used with a completely different meaning

so we will make a new spec, HTML 6, not back-compatible with this.

I don't think this is the right way

(don't forget that the original name was Web Application 1.0, so our target are Rich Web Applications, which definitely need more dialogs than dialogues)[/b]

[Coops]

Since American is (perhaps sadly) the most widespread variant of English, American terms are easier for most people to work with. (Consider color in CSS; it's not just HTML.)

Incidentally, centre has a different meaning to center in modern English: the former being a place where an activity is focussed (shopping centre) and the latter being a description of position (center of the dartboard). So using <center> for a positioning element is correct in English. Both meanings are written as center in American, IIRC, so it's correct in American as well. (It's somewhat like disc and disk.)

Not sure I agree with you about the British English spelling of "centre". I think it's the same spelling in all circumstances, i.e. "shopping centre" and "centre of the dart board".

[Tom Duhamel]

"a standarized and declarative way to create dialogs?"

you know, those annoying little windows prompting for input

In this context, I would call it a dialog box, which is a rather popular term among programmers and users. <dialogbox> would then appear natural.

However, a dialog box would be quite a interactive concept, whereas HTML is rather non interactive in nature, so I doubt one would find a usefulness in such a tag.