On Thu, Dec 24, 2009 at 07:27:51AM -0500, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> This is a book element:
>
> <book>...</book>
>
> Why "element"?
> Who decided to call it element?
Actually it is because of a transcription error.
Descriptive markup was first used in the 1950s by naturalists
in Africa, and read out loud over the radio to a base station
where they were carefully written down with a pen.
The person at the base station misheard and wrote "element"
instead of "elephant" and the mistake has stuck with us
ever since.
:-)
Liam
--
Liam Quin, W3C XML Activity Lead, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
http://www.holoweb.net/~liam/ * http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
