Jon Udell looks at multiple metadata values within CSS class attributes.

CSS is the logical place to put metadata in that metadata often, but not always, needs to be styled - e.g. a 'headline' might be big bold and blue.

But the main problem for me is that by using attributes in HTML tags to define metadata you have to count nested tags in a parser, which is a total pain and can cause problems if fragments of information are syndicated.

Wouldn't it be much better if HTML were amended to include closing attributes?

i.e. you could say:

<pre class="headline">DOJ sues Microsoft</pre class="headline">

instead of:

<pre class="headline">DOJ sues Microsoft</pre>

That way people wouldn't have to invent tags, which couldn't be styled, such as:

<headline>DOJ sues Microsoft</headline>