Re: Pizza Hut & Mosaic

Ralph Graw [RWG21657] (graw~rw%a1.usa.umc@mailgate.glaxo.com)
Thu, 25 Aug 1994 14:16:24 +0200

[This message is converted from WPS-PLUS to ASCII]

> BTW, I actually heard CBS radio news try to spell out the URL. They
> forgot
> to say the second slash after the "http:". The SF Examiner had the same
> error online on their WWW server but they corrected it when I pointed it
> out
> to them. BTW, I first heard about it from CNN.

Another interesting point - style guides for newspapers (and possibly other
media as well) are fairly dated when it comes to computer technology,
acronyms, etc. I saw the article via an electronic newsfeed so I cut and
paste the URL into Mosaic. The problem was they had used double quotes to
set off the URL from the surrounding text:

"http:/www.pizzahut.com."

Aside from the one slash error you mention above, the usual style
guidelines require them to put the trailing period inside the quotes -
because those guidelines think it's a "quote" rather than literal text.

I've argued with editors for years over such things to no avail...

Ralph Graw
rwg21657@glaxo.com