A Modest Construct

1. Reading an 8-year thread of responses to a longstanding Gecko bug makes for interesting reading.
2. You can list at least four different ways to create italicized text on a web page, as well as the semantic importance of each¹
3. You laugh at the joke about the pluperfect subjunctive scrod².
4. You like xkcd; even worse: you understand the humor more than half the time.
5. Point releases are still very important.
6. Whenever you see a computer (real life or on television), you try to determine what operating system or browser it’s running.

1. For the record, <em> is for emphasis; <i> is for things which have to be stylistically emphasized, such as foreign language; <cite> is for textual citations like books or movies; finally, there’s the CSS declaration font-style:italic, which can be attached to any HTML element that requires stylistic italicizing but doesn’t need an inline tag.[↩]
2. Once again, for the record, the “pluperfect subjunctive” line makes no technical sense, but was likely chosen because it sounds appropriately grammatical. Besides, English-speakers call it “past perfect” instead of “pluperfect;” nor, I believe, does the question in question contain any subjunctive verbs anyway. Some will tell you that there is no such construct as a pluperfect subjunctive, but they are wrong. Still, a hearty laugh for one of our few true grammar jokes.[↩]

Tags: nerd, personal, technology

Posted at : May 3rd, 2008 - 4:41 pm
Navigate : Previous post / Next post