Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

The caption element must immediately follow the opening table tag and precede all other table elements, as shown in this example and Figure 13-6.

    <table>
    <caption>Planetary Distances</caption>
    <tr><th>Planet</th><th>Distance from Earth</th></tr>
    <tr><td>Venus</td><td>pretty darn far</td></tr>
    <tr><td>Neptune</td><td>ridiculously far</td></tr>
    </table>

Figure 13-6. A table with a caption

By default, the caption appears at the top of the table. Its width is determined by the width of the table. You can use the caption-side style property to move the caption below the table. There is also a deprecated align attribute that does the same thing. The left and right values are not well supported, so authors generally have the option of putting the caption above or below the table.

Captions are a useful tool for table accessibility and will be addressed again briefly in the "Accessible Tables" section later in this chapter.