HTML <em> Tag for Italic Emphasis

 

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The <em> Tag in HTML 5

The <em> tag indicates that the content should be emphasized for some reason. The em element is one of the phrase elements in HTML. The appearance of text enclosed within a em element is often rendered with an italic font, the same as for the HTML <i> tag, which does not imply increased importance.


<em> Tag Syntax

<body>
   ...
   ... phrasing content expected ...<em>... phrasing content ...</em>...
   ...
</body>
Rules for coding HTML em elements

Make sure you understand the difference between a tag and element and are familiar with the definitions of namespace and other HTML terms.

  1. Code the em element for emphasized text where phrasing content is expected.
  2. Begin the em element with a starting <em> tag. The element name uses lower case letters and should be in the HTML namespace, which it will pick up automatically from the xmlns attribute on the <html> tag.
  3. Include any HTML global attributes on the <em> tag as appropriate.
  4. Inside the em element, between the starting <em> tag and the ending </em> tag, code the inner HTML phrasing content.
  5. End the em element with a matching </em> closing tag.
Content Model
Content of the emelement

The content of the em element can include HTML comments, text content and only those HTML tags that can be used in phrasing content.


<em> Tag Attributes

Attributes of the <em> tag
global attributes The only attributes that can be coded on the <em> tag are the common HTML attributes.

<em> Tag Examples

Examples of the em tag in HTML 5

Changes in HTML 5 - <em> Tag

What's new in HTML 5
Differences between HTML 5 and earlier versions of HTML

The 2000-2010 Recommendations from the W3C HTML Working Group defined the HTML namespace for the em 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