I don't find characters disappearing to be graceful enough

q tags don't represent characters; they're markup, metadata. (They may be represented _by_ characters, but that depends on the browser, the stylesheets in effect, and whatnot.)

Quote characters can have a significant effect on meaning.

So can italics, boldface, images, or lots of things. But q tags aren't used where a literal " character is wanted; we have entities for that. q tags are used for marking up a section of text; they are in principle similar to <cite> tags.

Some elitist label of "not modern" doesn't hold much sway with me.

I wouldn't make that argument if graceful degradation weren't one of the three or four most important aspects of the design of the web in the first place. Should mail servers not support CAPA because not all POP3 clients know how to use it? Or maybe the clients shouldn't attempt CAPA, since not all mail servers are guaranteed to support it? We're not talking here about taking functionality or information _away_ from people who use old software; we're talking about making previously-unavailable functionality or information available for people who use newer software that supports it; people who use software that doesn't will see the same thing they have been seeing.

In adjectives, with the addition of inflectional endings, a changeable long vowel (Qamets or Tsere) in an open, propretonic syllable will reduce to Vocal Shewa. This type of change occurs when the open, pretonic syllable of the masculine singular adjective becomes propretonic with the addition of inflectional endings.  — Pratico & Van Pelt, BBHG, p68

In reply to Re: INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts (graceful) by jonadab
in thread INS, DEL, Q tags now allowed in posts by ambrus

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.