HTML <tbody> Tag for Table Body

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The <tbody> Tag in HTML 5

The <tbody> tag is used to create the main body of a table in HTML, which consists of the two rows in this HTML table example:

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 body 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.

<tbody> Tag Syntax

<body>
   ... flow content expected ...
   <table>
      <thead>
         <tr>
            <th>...</th>
            ...
         </tr>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
         <tr>
            <td>...</td>
            ...
         </tr>
      </tbody>
      <tfoot>
         <tr>
            <td>...</td>
            ...
         </tr>
      </tfoot>
   </table>
</body>

Rules for coding the HTML `tbody` element

Child Elements of the <tbody> tag

<> tag(s): A <tr> tag for each table row with <td> tag(s) for each table cell in the table body.

<tbody> Tag Attributes

Attributes of the <tbody> tag

global attributes

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

<tbody> Tag Examples

Examples of the `tbody` 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 - <tbody> 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 tbody 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