A little HTML never hurt anybody

Couldn’t agree with you more. If you aren’t learning HTML, you are cheating yourself. If J-schools aren’t giving their students a thorough grounding in all things Web, those educators are doing their charges a great disservice.

And, kids, if your school isn’t teaching you, you need to teach yourself. If you want a job in this environment, you had better be bringing some interactive chops to the table.

It should be noted that none of these HTML tags Pat describes aren’t for page design or have anything to do with programing. They’re all for text formatting. They are the most important things every journalist should know about basic Web writing.

I liken not knowing what these tags do or how to use them to not knowing when to use commas and apostrophes.

That said, if a job description requires or recommends you know “a little HTML,” you should still probably know more than just these tags.

I absolutely agree. Newspapers have been setting their standards both too high and too low for their staff.

I’ve read too many job descriptions that seem to be asking for someone who double-majored in journalism and computer science, then worked at Microsoft and the Post for the past 6 years or so. All the while, writers are being asked to “write for the web first” without knowing the basic grammar of the internet.

I would recommend people don’t use dreamweaver and learn some hard coding it will help a lot in the long run.

@Zac

It should also be noted that no HTML elements (they’re not really tags) should be used for design. That’s what CSS is for.

Also, I would argue that reporters should never have to use any HTML beyond the following:


...
...
...


Additional formatting should be handled by the CMS and/or templates. Good designers could provide a style guide with various elements and classes to achieve other results.

Just knowing a little HTML is dangerous. You need to know how to use it right, and I’ve yet to see this done in a classroom setting.

Just noticed that you aren’t allowing the “code” element. Too bad.

What I tried to add was the “anchor” element, “list” element and the “emphasis” element.

@Patrick – I’m with you on standards, but many schools, especially j-schools, still teach HTML as design and leave CSS as an afterthought.

I don’t know if it’s necessary to know how to design anything as any good CMS will do layout for you. Those journalists, particularly reporters, need to know how to be Web writers, not designers (though understanding the underpinnings of Web design theory is crucial I don’t think it should be a central focus for most journalism students either).

That said, know your style guide laid out by your Web staff. Gross HTML is bad no matter how good the CMS.

Also, to nitpick: A tag is either the opening or closing of an element and is perfectly acceptable terminology.

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