Christopher Kade

Posted on May 28, 2019 • Edited on Jun 7, 2019

Unusual HTML tags worth knowing 🧩

#webdev #html #a11y #beginners

Using the right HTML elements has more importance than many of us realise.

Known as Semantic HTML, it's all about bringing meaning to the page and not just presentation. A <p> element contains a paragraph, and everyone knows what that should look like. Not only does it help communicate what the page contains to search engines, it also helps screen readers do their job as efficiently as possible.

This article will list some lesser known tags for you to have as many tools as possible on a daily basis.

`<abbr>`: Abbreviations

Should contain abbreviations like the ones in the example below. You could use this to define an abbreviation that is unfamiliar to the reader using the title attribute or inline text providing a definition.

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`<dfn>`: Definitions

You should use this element on the element being described in the context of the sentence. The ancestor <p>, <dt>/<dd>or <section> are considered to be the definition of that word.

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`<address>`: Contact information

You can use it to provide contact information.

As shared by Lars De Richter in the comments, we should keep in mind that not all types of addresses should be displayed using this element:

Information provided by address may include the names of the document’s maintainers, links to the maintainers’ Web pages, e-mail addresses for feedback, postal addresses, phone numbers, and so on. The address element is not appropriate for all postal and e-mail addresses; it should be reserved for providing such information about the contact people for the document.

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`<cite>`: Citations

Should be used when referencing cited creative work.

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`<del>`: Deleted text

This tag can surround text that has been deleted from a document.

It's definitely worth noting the accessibility concerns this tag presents.

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`<hgroup>`: Multi-level heading

This tag can regroup multiple headings in a document (<h1>-<h6>). This way, none of the secondary children in this group will create separate sections of their own.

It's worth noting that "the element has been removed from the HTML5 (W3C) specification, but it still is in the WHATWG version of HTML. It is partially implemented in most browsers, though, so is unlikely to go away." so use it with caution 😄 More information

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`<ins>`: Inserted text

Represents a range of text that has been added to a document, pretty similar to what Github displays to show a line of code that has been replaced.

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Wrapping up

There are so many HTML tags that are unknown to the vast majority of web developers. Putting content and meaning at the same level will help us build better and more inclusive web pages. All it takes is practice 😄

I hope you find some use-cases for these tags, as specific as some of them can be.

Either way, thank you so much for reading, if you enjoyed this article and learned a couple of things, following me on Twitter @christo_kade would be the best way to get informed on my latest articles & weird side-projects.

Latest comments (28)

Shannon Crabill • Jun 15 '19

Ah, I had forgotten about these tags

Andres Leon • Jun 7 '19

Thank you. I liked it

ut4utc • Jun 4 '19 • Edited

Hi Bro, what about this tags:
< q >, < mark >, < time >, and & #8209;

Christopher Kade • Jun 4 '19

It's a non exhaustive list :)

Mahdi pourlotfi • Jun 4 '19

thanks, for this handy article

Robert Rothenberg • Jun 3 '19

You're better off using RDFa or Microdata for semantic markup. Search engines understand it (at least partially), and the vocabulary is much more general.