# "Death touch" format problem

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377>\
**Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\
**Created:** [May 21, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377 "2004-05-21T16:05:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377/1 "2004-05-21T16:05:35Z")

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In [Is the “Ninja Death Touch” real?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040521.html) , there’s a formatting problem: everything starting with the words “kyusho jitsu” is italicized. My guess is that it is because those words are preceded with markup “\<em\>\<ital\>” instead of “\<ital\>\<em\>”. Of course, I can’t find any indication that “\<ital\>” is valid in any dialect of HTML whatsoever, let alone HTML 1.0, which the page is claiming to be (since there is no DOCTYPE), but that’s a problem for another day.

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**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377/2 "2004-05-21T16:35:38Z")

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Ah, a 1920’s-style “Ninja Death Touch”

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**Author:** ![Spurious\_George](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/94ad74/32.png) [@Spurious\_George](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spurious_George)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377/3 "2004-05-21T17:34:12Z")

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There’s a well-known pressure point right after “kyusho jitsu”. You can clearly see that the HTML has been karate-chopped there, and is undergoing a “period of nonresponsiveness”. 😛

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**Author:** ![jimbobboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/22d042/32.png) [@jimbobboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimbobboy)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2004, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/death-touch-format-problem/246377/4 "2004-05-21T20:01:44Z")

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> [@John W. Kennedy](#):
>
> In [Is the “Ninja Death Touch” real?](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040521.html) , there’s a formatting problem: everything starting with the words “kyusho jitsu” is italicized. My guess is that it is because those words are preceded with markup “\<em\>\<ital\>” instead of “\<ital\>\<em\>”. Of course, I can’t find any indication that “\<ital\>” is valid in any dialect of HTML whatsoever, let alone HTML 1.0, which the page is claiming to be (since there is no DOCTYPE), but that’s a problem for another day.

As an experiment, I changed “\<em\>\<ital\>kyusho jitsu\</em\>” to “\<em\>\<ital\>kyusho jitsu\</ital\>\</em\>”  
That fixed it.