HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

Editorial Markup

HTML 4.0 introduced two tags that can help groups of authors collaborate in the development of documents and maintain some semblance of editorial and version control. The insert (<ins>) and delete (<del>) tags respectively let you either designate portions of your document’s body as new or added content or designate old stuff that should be replaced. And with special attributes, you can indicate when you made the change (datetime) and a reference to a document that may explain the change (cite).

The <ins> and <del> Tags

The <ins> and <del> tags let authors set off portions of body contents that they intend to add to or delete from the current versions of their documents. HTML 4/XHTML-compliant browsers display the contents of the <ins> or <del> tags in some special way so that readers can quickly scan the document for the changes.

<ins> and <del>

Function

Define inserted and deleted document content

Attributes

cite, class, datetime, dir, id, lang, onClick, onDblClick, onKeyDown, onKeyPress, onKeyUp, onMouseDown, onMouseMove, onMouseOut, onMouseOver, onMouseUp, style, title

End tag

</ins> and </del>; never omitted

Contains

body_content

Used in

body_content

Netscape 4 and earlier versions ignore the tags, as did Internet Explorer 4 and its earlier versions. The newer versions of Internet Explorer (Versions 5 and 6) and Netscape (Version 6) use common editorial markings by underlining inserted text and striking out deleted text (Figure 3-3).

Figure 3-3. Internet Explorer ...