HTML Semantics: The Short Descriptions of All 113 Elements

Source: Dev.to

a

If the a element has an href attribute, then it represents a hyperlink (a hypertext anchor) labeled by its contents. If the a element has no href attribute, then the element represents a placeholder for where a link might otherwise have been placed, if it had been relevant, consisting of just the element’s contents.

abbr

The abbr element represents an abbreviation or acronym, optionally with its expansion. The title attribute may be used to provide an expansion of the abbreviation. The attribute, if specified, must contain an expansion of the abbreviation, and nothing else.

address

The address element represents the contact information for its nearest article or body element ancestor. If that is the body element, then the contact information applies to the document as a whole.

area

The area element represents either a hyperlink with some text and a corresponding area on an image map, or a dead area on an image map.

article

The article element represents a complete, or self-contained, composition in a document, page, application, or site and that is, in principle, independently distributable or reusable, e.g. in syndication. This could be a forum post, a magazine or newspaper article, a blog entry, a user‑submitted comment, an interactive widget or gadget, or any other independent item of content.

aside

The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography.

audio

An audio element represents a sound or audio stream.

b

The b element represents a span of text to which attention is being drawn for utilitarian purposes without conveying any extra importance and with no implication of an alternate voice or mood, such as key words in a document abstract, product names in a review, actionable words in interactive text‑driven software, or an article lede.

base

The base element allows authors to specify the document base URL for the purposes of parsing URLs, and the name of the default navigable for the purposes of following hyperlinks. The element does not represent any content beyond this information.

bdi

The bdi element represents a span of text that is to be isolated from its surroundings for the purposes of bidirectional text formatting.

bdo

The bdo element represents explicit text directionality formatting control for its children. It allows authors to override the Unicode bidirectional algorithm by explicitly specifying a direction override.

blockquote

The blockquote element represents a section that is quoted from another source.

body

The body element represents the contents of the document.

br

The br element represents a line break.

button

The button element represents a button labeled by its contents.

canvas

The canvas element represents a drawable region defined by its height and width attributes, which can be used via scripting to render graphics on the fly.

caption

The caption element represents the title of the table that is its parent, if it has a parent and that is a table element.

cite

The cite element represents the title of a work (e.g. a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an opera, a musical, an exhibition, a legal case report, a computer program, etc.). This can be a work that is being quoted or referenced in detail (i.e., a citation), or it can just be a work that is mentioned in passing. A person’s name is not the title of a work—even if people call that person a piece of work—and the element must therefore not be used to mark up people’s names.

code

The code element represents a fragment of computer code. This could be an XML element name, a filename, a computer program, or any other string that a computer would recognize.

col

If a col element has a parent and that is a colgroup element that itself has a parent that is a table element, then the col element represents one or more columns in the column group represented by that colgroup.

colgroup

The colgroup element represents a group of one or more columns in the table that is its parent, if it has a parent and that is a table element.

data

The data element represents its contents, along with a machine‑readable form of those contents in the value attribute.

datalist

The datalist element represents a set of option elements that represent predefined options for other controls. In the rendering, the datalist element represents nothing and it, along with its children, should be hidden.

dd

The dd element represents the description, definition, or value, part of a term‑description group in a description list (dl element).

del

The del element represents a removal from the document.

details

The details element represents a disclosure widget from which the user can obtain additional information or controls.

dfn

The dfn element represents the defining instance of a term. The paragraph, description list group, or section that is the nearest ancestor of the dfn element must also contain the definition(s) for the term given by the dfn element.

dialog

The dialog element represents a transitory part of an application, in the form of a small window (“dialog box”), which the user interacts with to perform a task or gather information. Once the user is done, the dialog can be automatically closed by the application, or manually closed by the user.

div

The div element has no special meaning at all. It represents its children. It can be used with the class, lang, and title attributes to mark up semantics common to a group of consecutive elements. It can also be used in a dl element, wrapping groups of dt and dd elements.

dl

The dl element represents an association list consisting of zero or more name‑value groups (a description list). A name‑value group consists of one or more names (dt elements, possibly as children of a div element child) followed by one or more values (dd elements, possibly as children of a div element child), ignoring any nodes other than dt and dd element children, and dt and dd elements that are children of div element children. Within a single dl element, there should not be more than one dt element for each name.

dt

The dt element represents the term, or name, part of a term‑description group in a description list (dl element).

em

The em element represents stress emphasis of its contents.

embed

The embed element provides an integration point for an external application or interactive content.

fieldset

The fieldset element represents a set of form controls (or other content) grouped together, optionally with a caption. The caption is given by the first legend element that is a child of the fieldset element, if any. The remainder of the descendants form the group.

figcaption

The figcaption element represents a caption or legend for the rest of the contents of the figcaption element’s parent figure element, if any.

figure

The figure element represents some flow content, optionally with a caption, that is self‑contained (like a complete sentence) and is typically referenced as a single unit.