The Working Group just discussed should `initial-letter` be plural?, and agreed to the following:

RESOLVED: change the initial-letter value to initial-letters

The full IRC log of that discussion

<dael> Topic: should `initial-letter` be plural?
<dael> github: https://github.com//issues/862
<myles> https://github.com//issues/2809
<dael> Rossen: As myles pointed out there's another related issue ^
<dael> Rossen: hyphenated-character
<dael> fantasai: Slightly different issues, I think, in sense that hypenated character is one character and if it's more than one unicode code point it's one thing from user prospective
<TabAtkins> (the word fantasai is searching for is "grapheme cluster")
<dael> fantasai: From author prospective it's a character from what I've heard of
<dael> Rossen: Let's do initial letter and then hypen
<dael> fantasai: initial-letter was originally plural and we decided to do that to make it clear that not only can you put multiple characters but also because it can apply to not just first-letter pseudo element but also the span which can have >1 char
<dael> fantasai: Intent to plural was to make it more clear you can do that
<florian> q+
<dael> fantasai: Reason it's an issue is b/c it's already shipping in WK
<dael> ??: prefixed
<dael> fantasai: It becomes an issue about compat if we're going to change name
<tantek> yes please keep it singular
<dael> dauwhe: This was an editing error in early spec stages. Prob 99% of use caes will be a single letter so I'm relatively agnostic.
<tantek> let's not design by edge-case
<dael> fantasai: I would change if even for single letter case it's a prop effecting multiple
<dael> fantasai: Problem is it's not just WK shipped, it's that doc written uses current name
<tantek> also consistent with :first-letter
<myles> initial-item?
<dael> fantasai: I don't think it's an edge case as that it's not as common in English. Dutch it's more common to have multiple. We have had requests for "what about first word" and youc an do that. That it says initial-letter guides people to assume you can't
<dael> dauwhe: You can educate people, though
<florian> q-
<tantek> agreed that it does sound like a selector
<dael> florian: From my pov I have slight preference for plural, but given slight compat I don't care strongly. I have another issue is that it desc what it applies to, not what it does. People keep thinking of this as a selector. In our last F2F there were questions making it seem like a selector. I don't have a good alternative, but I think this name is a problem b/c looks like selector
<dael> Rossen: Valid point. Do we have counter proposals? If we don't I would prefer to take that discussion back to github.
<dael> florian: it could be drop-cap but it also does initial. I don't know if there's a generic term for drop or raised cpas
<dael> fantasai: There isn't really which is how we ended up with initial-letter
<dael> florian: But I think that's the problem more then pluralization. I don't think single or plural matters enough
<dael> myles: Not sure how much compat is relelvent b/c prefix. But I think florian's point is right
<jensimmons> q+
<dael> Rossen: WE have options. Resolve the current issue and it seems most people lean not plural. Then we continue discussion here or separate as to if this is proper name.
<florian> Would "lettrine" work, or is that too obscure?
<dael> jensimmons: I like the idea of thinking about anthoer name. If we can't think of one I do like switching to plural. I don't think it's clear it would work on multi-letters. I don't think it's compat issue b/c not many people are using it.
<dael> fantasai: I don't think we have a web compat issue in terms of content. Do you think there's a lot of doc out there?
<gregwhitworth> +1 to what jensimmons - if we update MDN and caniuse we'll be good
<dael> jensimmons: No. I've been talking about it more then most in the industry. I think it would be easy enough when it ships for real to have a new round of education. The handful of docs could update or they're anchient.
<dael> fantasai: Then I lead toward make the change and then look for a less confusing word
<dael> fantasai: b/c even if members of WG are confused as to if it's a selector, we could hopefully do better.
<dael> dauwhe: I'm fine resolve for plural and hope for a new word
<tantek> how about take it github as Rossen suggested?
<dael> Rossen: Objections to change the initial-letter value to initial-letters?
<dael> RESOLVED: change the initial-letter value to initial-letters
<dael> Rossen: Rest can go to github and if there's a proposal we can go to WG
<dael> Rossen: myles still do hyphenated character now?
<dael> myles: still relevent

[css-inline] should initial-letter be plural? #862

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[css-inline] should `initial-letter` be plural? #862