HTML <thead> Tag for Table Header

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The <thead> Tag in HTML 5

The <thead> tag is used to create an area of table headings in HTML. When the table spans multiple pages, such as when a large table on a web page is printed, the table heading code within the thead element will appear on each page above the table body.

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 header 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.

<thead> 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 `thead` element

Child Elements of the <thead> tag

<tr> tag(s): A <tr> tag for each table row with <th> tag(s) for each column heading.

<thead> Tag Attributes

Attributes of the <thead> tag

global attributes

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

<thead> Tag Examples

Examples of the `thead` 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 - <thead> 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 thead 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