The Inline Element in html and its description

The Inline Element in html and its description

Many of the inline elements that have been around since the dawn of the Web were introduced
to change the visual formatting of text selections due to the lack of a style sheet system.
If you wanted bold ed-text, you marked it as b. Italics? Use the i element.
In fact, there was once a font element used solely to change the font, color, and size of text (the
horror!). Not surprisingly, HTML5 kicked the purely presentation font element to the curb.
However, many of the old-school presentation inline elements (for example, u for underline and s for strike-through)
have been kept in HTML5 and given new semantic definitions (b is now for “keywords,” s for “inaccurate text”).
Some inline elements are purely semantic (such as abbr or time) and don’t have default renderings.
For these, you’ll need to use a CSS rules if you want to change the way they display.
In the element descriptions in this section, I’ll provide both the definition of the inline
elements and the expected browser default rendering if there is one.

Text-level (inline) elements
Despite all the types of information you could add to a document, there are
only a couple dozen text-level semantic elements in HTML5. Table 5-1 lists
all of them.
Table 5-1. Text-level semantic elements
Element Description

a     An anchor or hypertext link (see Chapter 6 for details)

abbr     Abbreviation

b     Added visual attention, such as keywords (bold)

bdi     Indicates text that may have directional requirements

bdo     Bidirectional override; explicitly indicates text direction (left to right, ltr, or right to left, rtl)

br     Line break

cite     Citation; a reference to the title of a work, such as a book title

code     Computer code sample

data     Machine-readable equivalent dates, time, weights, and other measurable values

del     Deleted text; indicates an edit made to a document

dfn     The defining instance or first occurrence of a term

em     Emphasized text

i     Alternative voice (italic)

ins     Inserted text; indicates an insertion in a document

kbd     Keyboard; text entered by a user (for technical documents)

mark     Contextually relevant text

q     Short, inline quotation

ruby, rt, rp     Provides annotations or pronunciation guides under East Asian typography and ideographs

s          Incorrect text (strike-through)

samp         Sample output from programs

small        Small print, such as a copyright or legal notice (displayed in a smaller type size)

span        Generic phrase content

strong       Content of strong importance

sub        Subscript

sup        Superscript

time        Machine-readable time data

u       Underlined

var       A variable or program argument (for technical documents)

wbr       Word break