Teacher Discussion Forums

When I do transformations with my students, I like to point out that there is usually what I call a "live" and "dead" part of the sentence. "The dead" part just sits there and isn't involved in the transformation. Identifying the "live" and "dead" parts of a sentence greatly speeds up the process of doing transformations. Prepositional phrases are often "dead".

I'd like to show this on a website and the quote box at Daves ESL cafe looks like a good way of showing the "live" part of the sentence. I could leave the "dead" part outside the box.

Does anyone know how to write the HTML code to do this.

Dave do I have your permission to use the code?

Andrew Patterson

This should work:

<span class="alive">The alive bit is here,</span><span class="dead"> but the dead part is here</span>.

In the head of your document, put the following:
<style>
.alive{
color:#cc0000;
background:#ccccff
}
.dead{
color:#333333;
background:#999999
}
</style>

PS - it's not Dave's code. It's released under something called the GPL for free - the only stipulation is that you preserve that freedom for others by making your modifications available to others to use in the same way, and attribute where you got your ideas from.

If you have a good enough connection, www.phpbb.com has all the source code.

Enjoy, Al

Thanks Al.