I giggle a little bit inside when web designers say "We shouldn't use meaningless tags that exist only for layout. We should use semantic ones, like and !". Except that, uh, "header" and "footer" themselves are layout terms. They're just a metaphor for a document as a body (" ") with the head at the top and the feet at the bottom. It's not like the contents of a tag have anything to do with feet. We call it "semantic…
I do not see how the etymology of these words being a layout-metaphor argues against them having more semantic value now? The way you describe a footer makes it sound like the last block of text of any article (being at the bottom) is by definition the footer. Which is of course not the case: it is used for certain types of content. Your own book uses very heavily[0]. They are not just literally aside the regular flo…
That's a fair point. Since, historically, the convention has already been established that the stuff we put at the bottom of the page in a footer tends to be stuff about "X", we can now say with some confidence that "footer" has the semantic "about X".
> They are not just literally aside the regular flow of the document (actually, about that, see the next paragraph), the type of content in them is different - it is reserved for tangential stuff like jokes or deeper information that would interrupt the pacing of the main narrative.
Right, they are both. They are physically off to the side because they are unnecessary for the main line of the narrative. The form and the function are in harmony (as they should be!).
"Aside" is another funny word because it's also a spatial word. I'm not sure how it entered use for print. I could see it being simply because the text is to the side.
But "aside" also means an "an utterance not meant to be heard by someone; especially : an actor's speech heard by the audience but supposedly not by other characters". That conjures up a delightful image for me of an actor literally stepping to the side, leaning towards the audience and muttering a joke to them. That's the picture I always have in mind with the asides in my book.
I could see it entering print from that etymology too.
> I bought the epub version when it came out, and although it was a symbolic purchase (I had read the whole thing already as you wrote it), I somewhat regret the format choice due to the sorry state of epub readers.
I really appreciate you buying a copy! I agree, ePUB is about the worst format. But it works on eReaders, which is nice. If you aren't limited to one of those devices, the PDF or web version is probably better. If you'd like me to send you the PDF version, email me and I'd be happy to hook you up.