<abbr>

Summary

The HTML <abbr> Element (or HTML Abbreviation Element) represents an abbreviation and optionally provides a full description for it. If present, the title attribute must contain this full description and nothing else.

• Content categories Flow content, phrasing content, palpable content
• Permitted contentPhrasing content.
• Tag omission None, both the starting and ending tag are mandatory.
• Permitted parent elements Any element that accepts phrasing content.
• DOM interface HTMLElement Up to Gecko 1.9.2 (Firefox 3.6) inclusive, Firefox implemented the HTMLSpanElement interface for this element.

Attributes

This element only includes the global attributes.

Use the title attribute to define the full description of the abbreviation. Many user agents present this as a tooltip.

Default styling

The purpose of this element is purely for the convenience of the author and all browsers display it inline (display: inline) by default, though its default styling varies from one browser to another:

• Some browsers, like Internet Explorer, do not style it differently than a <span> element.
• Opera, Firefox, and some others add a dotted underline to the content of the element.
• A few browsers not only add a dotted underline, but also put it in small caps; to avoid this styling, adding something like font-variant: none in the CSS takes care of this case.

It is therefore strongly recommended that web authors not rely on the default styling. Note that this element is not supported by Internet Explorer prior to IE7. As these IE versions don't allow styling for unknown elements, the following script is necessary to allow it:

<!--[if lte IE 6]>
  <script>
    document.createElement("abbr");
  </script>
<![endif]-->

Example

<p>Tony Blair is the prime minister of the <abbr title="United Kingdom">UK</abbr></p>

Result

Tony Blair is the prime minister of the UK

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Other elements conveying text-level semantics: <a>, <em>, <strong>, <small>, <cite>, <q>, <dfn>, <time>, <code>, <var>, <samp>, <kbd>, <sub>, <sup>, <b>, <i>, <mark>, <ruby>, <rp>, <rt>, <bdo>, <span>, <br>, <wbr>.