HTML <caption> Tag

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The <caption> Tag in HTML 5

The <caption> tag is used to create a table caption in HTML as shown the this demo of an HTML table.

→Table Caption←
	Multiple Column Heading
	First Column Heading	Second Column Heading
This is an example of an HTML table footer.
Row 1	Row 1 Column 1	Row 1 Column 2
Row 2	Row 2 Column 1	Row 2 Column 2

This is an actual working demo of the table caption example code below. (Do View Source to verify that this page is using the HTML 5 DOCTYPE. You can also verify it is Valid HTML 5 using the HTML Validator. Try using it to validate URLs with HTML examples from other places that claim to be HTML 5 web sites!)

See the tutorial on Creating HTML Tables for full details on how to create an HTML table using the HTML table tags together.

<caption> Tag Syntax

Rules for coding HTML `caption` elements

<caption> Tag Attributes

Attributes of the <caption> tag

global attributes

In addition to the personal attributes of the <caption> tag below, any of the common HTML attributes can also be coded.

<caption> Tag Examples

Examples of the `caption` tag in HTML 5

Here is the HTML code for the table demo above:

<table>
   <caption>Table Caption</caption>
   <colgroup>
      <col style="width: 20%"/>
      <col style="width: 80%"/>
   </colgroup>
   <thead>
      <tr>
         <th rowspan="2"></th>
         <th colspan="2">Multiple Column Heading</th>
      </tr>
      <tr style="vertical-align: bottom">
         <th>First Column Heading</th>
         <th>Second Column Heading</th>
      </tr>
   </thead>
   <tfoot>
      <tr><td colspan="2">This is an example of an HTML table footer.</td></tr>
   </tfoot>
   <tbody>
      <tr>
         <td>Row 1 Column 1</td>
         <td>Row 1 Column 2</td>
      </tr>
      <tr>
         <td>Row 2 Column 1</td>
         <td>Row 2 Column 2</td>
      </tr>
   </tbody>
</table>

Changes in HTML 5 - <caption> Tag

What's new in HTML 5

Differences between HTML 5 and earlier versions of HTML

The following attributes should not be coded on the <caption> tag because they either have been deprecated or were never officially supported:

align

The 2000-2010 Recommendations from the W3C HTML Working Group defined the HTML namespace for the caption element type name along with the names of all HTML element types. In older (pre-2000) versions of HTML, element type names were not associated with a namespace.

Valid HTML 5

HTML <caption> Tag