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Text Formatting Elements

This is easily the largest section in this reference, in terms of the number of elements that it includes. The text formatting elements listed here range from the extremely useful and oft-used em (emphasis) and strong (strong emphasis), through the peculiar and little-known Ruby markup elements (ruby, rb, rbc, and so on), to the deprecated elements from days long gone, which include marquee, tt, and big/small.

All the elements included here are Inline and Phrase Elements elements—they can’t be wrapped around any Block-level Elements (with the exception of del and ins, whose properties allow them a special dispensation).

The span element is also listed here. Strictly speaking, it’s not a text formatting element, as it doesn’t offer any semantic information on its own. That said, the span can’t be wrapped around a block element, and is primarily used to surround text content for the purposes of styling or scripting. It is for this reason that it has been included in this index rather than in the Structural Elements.

In this Section

  • a
    defines an anchor (or hyperlink)
  • abbr
    defines an abbreviated form of a longer word or phrase
  • acronym
    an abbreviation comprising the initial letters of a given phrase
  • address
    identifies an administrator or owner of a document
  • b
    sets enclosed text to bold type
  • basefont
    sets a basic font size for normal browser text
  • bdo
    overrides the current text direction
  • big
    increases the font size of text
  • blink
    blinks text on-off
  • center
    centers all the enclosed content
  • cite
    identifies a reference to a written work, play, book, or magazine
  • code
    identifies text as computer or machine-readable code
  • comment
    inserts a comment into markup
  • del
    identifies deleted content
  • dfn
    identifies the defining instance of a term
  • em
    signifies emphasized content
  • font
    the (out-of-favor) font styling element
  • i
    sets the enclosed text to italic type
  • ins
    identifies inserted content
  • kbd
    identifies a typed entry on a keyboard
  • marquee
    scrolling text area
  • nobr
    tells browser not to break/wrap contained text
  • noscript
    provides alternative content for use when scripts aren’t supported or are switched off
  • plaintext
    tells browser to treat all following text as plain text
  • pre
    defines preformatted text in which whitespace and line breaks are preserved
  • q
    defines an inline quotation
  • rb
    specifies ruby base text
  • rbc
    defines the ruby base container for complex ruby markup
  • rp
    specifies ruby parentheses
  • rt
    defines ruby text annotation
  • rtc
    defines a ruby text container for complex ruby markup
  • ruby
    provides a mechanism for annotating foreign characters
  • s
    renders text with a horizontal strike (line) through the middle
  • samp
    defines a sample of the characters to be output
  • small
    sets a reduced font size for the enclosed text
  • span
    creates a generic inline container
  • strike
    renders text with a horizontal strike (line) through the middle
  • strong
    signifies strongly emphasized content
  • sub
    specifies subscript text
  • sup
    specifies superscript text
  • tt
    specified text to be formatted in monospace, or fixed-width font
  • u
    underlines enclosed text
  • var
    defines a variable part of a phrase or example
  • wbr
    suggests where in a word a break should occur
  • xmp
    example text

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