Web Design in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Name

p

Synopsis

    <p>...</p>

Attributes

Core (id, class, style, title), Internationalization, Events

Deprecated attributes

align="center|left|right"

Paragraphs may contain text and inline elements, but they may not contain other block elements, including other paragraphs. The following is an example of a paragraph marked up as a p element.

<p>Paragraphs are the most rudimentary elements of a text
    document. They are indicated by the p element.</p>

Because paragraphs are block elements, they always start a new line. Most browsers also add margins above and below block elements. Text is formatted flush-left, ragged right for left-to-right reading languages (and flush-right for right-to-left reading languages). Style sheets may be used to override any default browser rendering.

HTML 4.01 allows the end </p> tag to be omitted, leaving user agents to parse the beginning of a new block element as the end of the previous paragraph. In XHTML, however, all elements must be terminated, and omitting end tags will cause the document to be invalid. For reasons of forward compatibility, it is recommended that you close paragraphs and all elements regardless of the markup language you are using.