[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by bookman156

Cheers Tex2002ans, that's really interesting. I particularly like the idea of getting a French dictionary for French words, that's pretty cool.

Originally Posted by bookman156

What's the difference, if any? Is it best to just have both all the time?

Use both all the time.

I described the reasons why in 2021: "Search and Replace" (Post #11).

• HTML = lang
• XHTML (or XML) = xml:lang

Most programs recognize both types, but there may be tools out there that only support 1 of the 2.

Originally Posted by bookman156

I've never actually thought about tagging foreign phrases in English text before. I do a lot of stuff with traditional Chinese, I may well build that in, it's interesting.

Fantastic. Your life is a hell of a lot easier then!

Finding "foreign words" in alternate alphabets (like Greek/Chinese/Japanese) is much easier because you can use Spellcheck Lists + Reports—after you sort all words alphabetically, the Chinese words pop right out!

See my amazing mini-tutorial in:

• 2021: "Japanese characters not showing up on some devices"

and my topic where I described all the ins/outs:

• 2020: "Should Chinese Fonts be Embedded in Ebooks?"

Finding all the French in an English book is pretty painstaking, because they both use the Latin alphabet... but tagging all Chinese? Easy peasy. (Or should I say "easier peasier"?)

Originally Posted by bookman156

And just to confirm, you'd need to add a span class to get say French into italic? Or can you directly style the language declaration?

Use:

<i class="french" lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">

The class is optional, but allows you to easily use basic CSS (which will work on everything):

i.french {
	font-color: red;
}

With advanced CSS selectors, you're able to choose based on languages:

i:lang(fr) {
	font-color: red;
}

but support for that across devices/ebooks might not be the best.

(For more info, see MDN article on ":lang()".)

* * *

Anyway, this thread should really stick to discussion on Italics/Emphasis.

If you want more info on HTML lang, read all those previous linked topics (and then create a separate, new thread, so it'll be infinitely easier to find in the future).