HTML & XHTML: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition

Content-Based Style Tags

It takes discipline to use HTML/XHTML content-based style tags because it is easier to simply think of how your text should look, not necessarily what it may also mean. Once you get started using content-based styles, your documents will be more consistent and better lend themselves to automated searching and content compilation.

Content-Based Style Tags

Function	Alter the appearance of text based upon the meaning, context, or usage of the text
Attributes	class, dir, id, lang, onClick, onDblClick, onKeyDown, onKeyPress, onKeyUp, onMouseDown, onMouseMove, onMouseOut, onMouseOver, onMouseUp, style, title
End tags	Never omitted
Contains	text
Used in	text

The <abbr> Tag

First introduced in HTML 4.0, the <abbr> tag indicates that the enclosed text is an abbreviated form of a longer word or phrase. The browser might use this information to change the way it renders the enclosed text or substitute alternative text. Notice that we said might—not all of the popular browsers currently do anything to the text enclosed by the <abbr> tag, and we can't predict how other browsers will implement the tag in the future.

The <acronym> Tag

The <acronym> tag indicates that the enclosed text is an acronym, an abbreviation usually formed from the first letter of each word in a name or phrase, such as HTML and IBM. Like <abbr>, not all browsers change the display of the <acronym> content-based style tag's enclosed text.

The <cite> Tag

The <cite> tag usually indicates that the enclosed ...