Designing the colophon section of a Web page

It is good Web etiquette to provide material at the bottom of each page that identifies the author of the page, so that readers can contact the author to pass on suggestions or get further information. We might call this the ``colophon,'' by analogy with information in printed books that tells how they were produced.

Use a horizontal rule (<hr>) to set off the colophon, then use <address> ... </address> tags to enclose the name and e-mail address of the page's author.

If the page is currently being maintained by someone other than the original author, it is probably good practice to mention both, but make it clear who should get e-mail about the page.

As a courtesy to readers who may want to know how recently the page was updated, you may want to include the date of last revision. Since most readers won't care about this, you might as well put at the very end. If you are using version control software such as RCS, place the $Header$ or other RCS ID keywords here.

John Shipman, john@nmt.edu Last updated: 1995/12/19 18:39:54 UT URL: http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/html/colophon.html